ORIGINAL MAYBE SOMEDAY

i don't understand the casual enslavement of other species. it seems to me an unnecessary cruelty. and there is enough inescapable cruelty in the world that it is hard for me to imagine why people so thoughtlessly add to their burden and the burden of the ethos of life on earth by indulging in it. i have lived three-quarters of my lengthening life on vegetable foods and non-leather attire and am healthy and fit.

the only kind of enslavement i understand is perhaps the kind participated in by pets; dogs, cats, even horses i understand. still i used to root for the horse to pitch me off and escape to freedom. though i treated them well and cared for them, in me they would have found a silent ally. even the goats i once kept for dairy products and were quite pampered i quietly approved when they found some little flaw in their imprisonment and escaped to the freedom of the woods (though i always chased them down and brought them back). but to kill their male babies, throwing them on the table and holding them down for the throat to be slit, though i am not squeamish, struck me as a pretty primitive barbarity. i learned from hunting to shoot, gut, skin and butcher animals, and from my little fishboat i brained a lot of fish, but it never fooled me into thinking it was necessary or less than cruel. and so i stopped.

the more i have lived with wild creatures and the more i have studied life, especially molecular genetics, the more i understand that we are all really essentially the same, living the same story. we just have different capacities. i can't outrun a horse and he, most times, cannot outthink me. but as far as the emotional life, the things we are genetically programmed to care about, like offspring, safety, food security, comrades, lovers — snails embrace. fish get excited. insects get angry. and ravens share. animals care for each other, not just their offspring, they look out for each other, they signal danger to the group, they cooperate, they learn. they think.

maybe someday we will all be a little more original and a little easier on the planet and the critters we share it with.