Parenting from Scratch» Blog Archive

Life and death

February 12th, 2010 by Brooke

Here’s something you might not guess about me: I have purposefully taken the life of an animal in order to eat it. Okay, more than one. And I don’t mean in the existential I-eat-meat-therefore-I-take-lives sort of way. I mean with a knife.

Anyway, so I had just come home from work and picking up Sadie yesterday evening, and I put sleeping Sadie’s car seat in her crib and shut the bedroom door. I went back out to the car to fetch the rest of the crazy load I always seem to have, and there it was. A bird. A dovey-pigeon sort of thing. At first, I thought it was drinking some melted snow that had puddled. But then I realized it was letting me get entirely too close to it. I looked a bit closer and saw that it seemed to be standing on only one leg. I kind of nudged it with my boot, and it just sort of looked up at me. I knew then that it was definitely hurt. I thought about picking it up, but birds and diseases are a little iffy for me (says the gal with the chickens in her backyard). In that moment, I thought it would be best just to take its life. To kill it. So it wouldn’t have to wait to be run over by a car or to freeze or starve to death. I knew it wouldn’t be difficult. But it was too hard. I couldn’t do it. It was never a problem for me to kill a chicken or a turkey to eat it. But, after carrying my rosy-cheeked, full-of-life spawn into the house, it was simply too hard to do.

I hope the bird didn’t have to wait too long to die. And I hope the universe forgives me for chickening out in the heat of the moment.

5 Responses

Ashley writes:
February 12th, 20109:41 amat

I understand completely. I have felt much differently about these questions of life and death since having Marjorie. It keeps being driven home to be when I see photographs of suffering infants in Haiti, sick and crying. Ah, it goes right to my core! I think before I was a parent I would have felt compassion, but now it’s an empathy that runs so deep it makes me want to cry every time I watch the news.

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- Brooke writes:
  February 12th, 20101:11 pmat
  
  Ah, this is another reason I’m glad I don’t watch the news. But it is really hard to think of any baby or child suffering anywhere, and it happens all the time. And to think of Sadie being exposed to suffering is sad, too. I know it’s a normal, healthy part of life to witness, but sad nonetheless.
  
  Reply
katie writes:
February 12th, 201011:02 amat

I love the new blog! The ads on the right hand side seem to be cutting of 1/4 of the text or so- maybe this is just my computer….

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- Brooke writes:
  February 12th, 20101:11 pmat
  
  Hmm. That is strange. I’ve tested it in several browsers and not had a problem. Maybe it is just your computer… I wonder if anybody else is having this issue.
  
  Reply
Shannon Horton writes:
February 12th, 20101:31 pmat

i had the same issue but it was my computer setting. Once we changed it, it was fine.

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