Better world might start with less cruelty to animals

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Perversely enough, I did the killing in a cemetery. My mother needed to tend flowers there and brought me along. I was 5 years old. As we walked among the headstones, I saw a large leopard frog in the grass. I stomped on it, smashing the creature into red pulp.

My mother was enraged. She didn't strike me, and I don't remember her words, but she shamed me. I started to cry. Some of the tears were for the frog, or at least for my regret at its destruction. I wanted to fix it and with a certain horror realized this was impossible.

Some 65 years later I still feel remorse. But also gratitude for my mother's wrath. Her anger was righteous, my shame deserved — and obviously memorable. She could have rolled her eyes and accepted the timeless excuse that "boys will be boys." But for her I clearly crossed a line that day.

Why did I murder the frog? Fear? Morbid curiosity? Boredom? An expression of personal power? A decade later I had a .22 rifle, and was a proud member of the National Rifle Association in the era before it became a shrill and paranoid lobby for the firearms industry. I'd taken a gun safety course and marksmanship training on the firing range in the basement of the local National Guard Armory.

One September afternoon a cousin and I ventured into the woods just north of town to hunt grouse and squirrels. We were excited, aching to shoot and kill. My mother did not oppose this armed excursion. This kind of killing was culturally sanctioned and encouraged.

We tramped through brushy forest for a long time and flushed no quarry. We grew restless, our trigger fingers itchy. Then a moderately large, grayish bird glided into the mid-canopy several yards in front of us. "A grouse!" I rasped.

We raised our rifles and fired a half-dozen shots, too pumped up to properly aim. Before it died the bird darted into another tree where at least one of our bullets hit home and it fluttered to the ground. We rushed over and found a broken and bloody Canada jay, a species noted for its whistling call and ease with people. I was ashamed again.

Around that time I dissected a frog in a high school biology class, but it was already dead and preserved before it arrived on the table. If I'd needed to kill it before the dissection, would I have avoided remorse in the cause of science education? Perhaps. It might have depended upon how the killing was done. Stomping and shooting had not served me well.

Decades later, I became acquainted with the remarkable essays of the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne. They were published in 1580, and eventually celebrated as essential documents of the Renaissance. Hardly any facet of life escaped Montaigne's attention, and during an age when the lives of animals were held cheap and humans were unequivocally deemed the pinnacle of life on Earth, Montaigne wrote "On Cruelty," a piece questioning "that imaginary kingship that people give us over the other creatures."

He decried the common brutality toward animals, confessing he regretted killing chickens and "cannot well refuse my dog the play he offers me or asks of me outside the proper time."

Ahead of his era?

These days, deference to animals and a reluctance to kill them is unremarkable. Recent books like "Mama's Last Hug" by Franz de Waal and "An Immense World" by Ed Yong detail the research that recognizes how intelligent, capable and sentient other species are, and in what ways their senses transcend our own.

Yong's book did nothing to ease my conscience by describing the complex sensory talents that accompany the mating process and predator avoidance strategies of some frog species. Is this "presence" something my mother intuitively understood? Is contemporary research meticulously confirming what we already feel, already know? Is it further revealing the sentience that older societies revered?

Black Elk, the famous Oglala Lakota medicine man, shared a vision any mother and child would savor: "Then the bay horse spoke to me again and said: 'See how your horses all come dancing!' I looked, and there were horses everywhere — a whole skyfull of horses dancing around me."

An important source of our respect and affection for animals is children's literature, television and movies. Talking animals who want to be our friends are a staple; we cuddle with teddy bears. Our early years are saturated with anthropomorphism.

As much as we traditionally envy birds for personal flight, we may be even more excited by the prospect of conversing with other species. Several years ago, on April Fools' Day, National Public Radio broadcast a playful hoax report about a scientist who'd managed to decode the barking of a dog named Max. During the clip we hear Max bark, and the researcher translates it as, "Max go Dairy Queen!"

A well-educated, highly intelligent person I know believed it — out of a yearning for it to be true. Foolery aside, a childlike approach to our animal relations may be the wisest long-term course.

Sure, there are sound ecological reasons to protect animals, especially wildlife. Biodiversity is the key to our prosperity. When European fur companies nearly wiped out the beavers in North America, the continental landscape and water supply profile were degraded to an alarming degree. The near extinction of the bison was a catastrophe for many Indian tribes, and compromised the vast prairie ecosystem itself. Contemporary threats to bee populations could conceivably cut our agricultural production to the point of mass starvation. We could go on.

As renowned scientist and synthesist E.O. Wilson wrote: "Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world."

But aside from those tangible motives to make space for animals, what might make the most difference in their survival and proliferation is our apparent desire to be intimate. We want them to like us, as so many do in the storybooks and cartoons we cherished as children. They won't like us if we destroy their homes and offspring. Emotional connections tend to transcend rational, clinical analysis. Cost/benefit calculation might not involve dollars so much as metaphorical brownie points and valentines, an aspect of "biophilia," as Wilson termed our deep connections to the biosphere.

Let's acknowledge here that the desire and opportunity to legally hunt and kill certain species of "game" animals has significantly contributed funds and energy to the restoration and protection of wildlife habitat in North America, especially wetlands. Let's also acknowledge that no being can live without directly or indirectly killing other beings. That's how the world works.

Nevertheless, we directly or indirectly kill too many animals, whether it's domestic meat production or the destruction of nongame wildlife. For example, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the bird population in North America has declined by 2.9 billion individuals since 1970, including 53% of grassland species and 28% of migratory birds. An author of the study calls it, "A staggering loss that suggests the very fabric of North America's ecosystem is unraveling." Not unlike what happened when the beavers were nearly wiped out. The good news is we've gone a long ways in rectifying that previous slaughter.

It's common knowledge that raising cattle and hogs in the numbers we desire is a major contribution to our collective carbon footprint and habitat degradation for other species. We need to eat, but we can certainly consume less meat; we can destroy fewer sentient beings.

Yes, I'm apparently still seeking atonement for a murdered frog and a wasted Canada jay, and you may mock me if you wish. But when you next have occasion to look an animal in the eye, truly consider how many of them we need to kill. And admit you want them to like you.

Peter M. Leschak, of Side Lake, Minn., is the author of "Ghosts of the Fireground" and other books.