Of Bunnies and Shovels
In case you hadn't heard, a highschool teacher in Florida euthanized a couple baby rabbits the other day more or less in front of her class. Em had sent me a link, and Chuck and James are talking about it on their blogs.
The reaction I wanted to have was something along the lines of "our military is right now doing much worse things to actual human beings, and these kids are disturbed by mercy killings of 5 inch rabbits?! Stop sheltering America's youth!!"
I can't really have this attitude, though, because honestly I get sad when things die. Em and I had a discussion about pets and euthanasia, since I've had a couple little animals die slowly on me. When I was younger I had a hamster who developed some awful disease or something, and went through the throes of death for hours and hours. I really contemplated doing exactly what that teacher did, taking a shovel and quickly breaking the animal's neck. You should have seen it, a hamster, laying on its back on the floor in my room, trying desperately to fend off death.
Then a few weeks ago, my new fish came from the store carrying a deadly parasite. As it started to show symptoms, I tried to treat it, but it was obviously too late. Should I have taken it out of the water and left it to suffocate? Should I have flushed it and let the septic system do my dirty work? Em and I later had a conversation where I decided putting the fish in a tupperware container of water in the freezer to freeze to death would probably be the best way to go, if fish die like people (I knew they made you read "To Build a Fire" in highschool for a reason).
It would certainly be more humane to kill them quickly, but I could never bring myself to be the actual cause of death. We both decided it's much easier to "let nature take its course." This is, of course, a less humane cop-out, but we're modern Americans, dammit, and we don't deal with icky stuff.
March 26th, 2004 at 1:22 pm
I don’t know if I’d have been able to kill those rabbits. As I mentioned on my weblog, I’ve had disturbing accidental incidents with baby rabbits before (bigger than the ones in the story).
But I just would find it hard to condemn the woman.
Again, it’s a tough, tough situation. And tough to judge.