My temporary housemate Jordi came home the other night with a sad story the other night; a possum had been hit in the road not far from the house, but was not dead yet. She asked me to go help her finish the possum off. I went down the street with her without a knife or anything, just to assess the siduation because I thought the possum might just be playing dead. But the possum had a bloody, mangled head and was staggering in the street; clearly in a lot of pain. A few people where out in the street gathered around the possum.
"We should do something about this.." I said to one of the men standing there. "Do you have a knife or something?"
"I have a hatchet..." He said. He went back into the house to get the hatchet, or so I thought. In the meantime, a neighbor across the street came out of his house with a shovel. He began beating on the possum, as the possum continued to stagger in the street.
"What are you doing?" I yelled at him. I turned to the other guy, who had emerged from his house again, hatchet-less, but yammering away on his cell phone. "Hey, get me a hatchet, this asshole obviously doesn't know what he is doing!"
The man with the shovel yelled back, as he beat the hapless possum. "What does it matter? It is just a possum...I hate these things!!!" He seemed to be smirking as he struck the possum over and over again with the shovel.
"JUST A POSSUM!?" I was furious. I watched in horror as my namesake (outside of blogland, many people call me possum,) continued to stagger, and the man continued to beat it, alternating between stabbing it with the sharp end of the shovel in the neck and beating it over the head with the blunt part. I felt like I was watching that brutal scene in American History X where the dude gets curb-stomped, only in real life. I felt rage burning in my veins, and I could picture myself grabbing the shovel from the man and hitting him over the head while yelling "JUST A HUMAN." But something kept me spellbound and unable to move.
I don't know how people can think like this, despite being raised in a redneck area of the world, where my cousins would beat woodchucks to death in the same manner, for being "pests." I've heard people say things like "just a tree," or "just a rat," but I can't think in those terms. To me, the living is divine; anything through which pulses life is holy. The possum especially, being the only marsupial on the North American continent; the possum like the ghost of the night, the great surviver and dumpster-diver. Female possums have thirteen nipples arranged in a spiral on their bellies; when they give birth, thirteen baby possums climb hairless into their pouch and attach themselves in a magical spiral of milk-drinking life.
So after skinning the possum and making the hide into a hat; I intent to return the skinned body to the porch of the man who beat the animal to death, perhaps with a note reading
"Return of the Possum,"
Love ya,
Carrot
Good words, Carrot. I totally feel the way you do. Even though the possums I've seen in real life seem to be nasty critters with a 'tude, I couldn't imagine beating an animal to death like that. No matter what animal it happened to be.
It reminds me of drivers who purposely swerve to hit an animal crossing the road. It's sick and it's wrong, and these people seem to lack an understanding or a sympathy for life.
The possum was hurt bad, and the hatchet would have been a more humane way for it to go. If wielded properly it would have been quick--and we hope--painless. A shovel is just...cruel.
You should send that neighbor a card marked "Love PETA" with the skinned possum in a wrapped present. .. :)
*~*~*~*~
I need some more input from y'all here in this forum topic: A ProgressiveU Radio Show/Podcast
I think this is an idea that can improve the ProgressiveU community.
I don't really like how PETA protests sometimes; I don't consider myself part of them, but I'm definitely against animal cruelty.
I think I'm just gonna put the skinned possum on the porch without any sort of note or explanation; I believe I yelled enough that this guy will know what the message is.
god, yeah, that was a brutal experience.
Love ya,
Carrot
The humane thing to do would be to shoot the poor thing.
Hacking at it with a knife or a hatchet is only marginally better than hitting it with a shovel.
Another humane choice would be to put it in a plastic garbage can and throw in a pint of Clorox and a pint of ammonia, clamp the lid on tight and be careful not to inhale any of the resulting lethal chlorine gas.
I agree..a gun would have been the fastest and probably easiest way to kill this poor critter...but I bet ya if I'd whipped a gun out in the middle of a Portland street and shot something, cops would be called, people would be questioned, things would get weird. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is frowned upon in urban areas, despite the fact that we have wild animals still roaming the streets and getting hit by cars...where I grew up, everyone practically had guns handy, so when this sort of thing happens, that is what you do.
I don't know how I feel about the whole gas-chamber garbage can scenario...
It does seem strange that we don't have better ways of dealing with injured animals in the city; it isn't like our car culture hits things so rarely that we don't often have to deal with half-dead, bloody animals staggering about..from what I've seen, this is a fairly common occurrence.
Love ya,
Carrot
You are right about the guns and it ties into the title of your post being a "sad symptom of civilization".
In my less civilized town here in Wyoming about half a dozen of the neighbors would have had the ready means and the willingness to dispatch the poor critter in a humane and CIVILIZED manner with a gun. The cops might have been called but there would be no drama once the cops realized the weapon had been discharged for a valid reason. Interestingly, despite the huge numbers of guns we have on a per capita basis, we very seldom use them to shoot each other.
The gas chamber would certainly not be a painless death but it would have been very quick and probably less painful then being repeatedly bashed and stabbed with a shovel and not nearly as gross as being beheaded with a hatchet which would probably take several chops and send blood and gore in all directions.
I went camping once when I was a kid and being a very inexperienced camper took everything but the kitchen sink ..... except that between three of us kids we did not have a knife. We ended up cleaning several trout we caught with a hatchet. It was messy, ragged business. And then we set them on a stump and beheaded them and their little heads rolled off the stump and landed on the ground staring up at us. I like trout and eat them frequently but I could not bring myself to eat THOSE trout. It was too gross.
I have a funny story about a little old lady that dispatches nuisance squirrels in that gas chamber manner but I'm not going to tell it. I've known since I was a little kid that it was a bad idea to mix ammonia and chlorax but I learned the practical gas chamber application from her.
yeah, interesting isn't it; it seems country folk often own more guns then city folk, yet the percentage of gun murders per capita in the country is much, much lower then in the city. Local yokels seem to have better morals and safety ideals...
The hatchet would have still been a messy, gory way to dispatch the possum, but the shovel was pretty horror-movie-esque. I think I would have preferred the hatchet, or a knife to either the shovel or the gas-chamber idea. I know exactly where to slit a neck, due to experience killing ducks and turkeys, although I would have needed thick gloves for holding the possum's mouth closed, because he surely would have tried to bite me.
I'm getting a gun asap; although if I continue to live in Portland I still won't be able to put animals out of their misery with it...
Love ya,
Carrot
Local yokels seem to have better morals and safety ideals...
Perhaps that's true about better morals.
Or perhaps people realize that since almost everybody has guns, that if they start shooting there is a good chance the other guy will shoot back.
Maybe some of each.