Blue Rabbit Urine and kids with guns

[urbpan]

I got an email today from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. I had to google the acronym to figure out who they were, and their terse message indicated they wanted one of my photos. No offer to pay, just a request for permission and a for a higher-resolution image. They were asking about my blue rabbit urine photo. I'm not going to explain, you have to click that link and read it.

While googling NYSDEC I discovered an album full of photos of child hunters. By which I mean human children who hunt, as a hobby, not people or monsters that hunt children. There's something haunting about a picture of an eleven year old boy hoisting up a 42 pound coyote he's killed. Actually, probably an adult guardian killed the coyote, since I'm inferring that the age for firearms use in NY State is 14 (based on the deer hunter photos). (If I understand trapping correctly, the trapper sets a line of traps in the afternoon/evening, then checks them the next morning; animals are held in place but not killed by the traps, and the trapper shoots the trapped animal.)

And speaking of legally owning firearms, I got my FID card today. It's amusing to me that I got my driver's license just as I turned 30 and now I've gotten my first gun license as I've turned 40. For now, the card simply allows me to transport firearms as needed for work. I can see learning to use a shotgun and/or a rifle at some point (some point after we've moved from Massachusetts), as I think these are useful skills and useful tools. For the record, I am in favor of hunting for food, but I think it's absurd when people call it a "sport." Not that it doesn't take considerable skill, but it seems disrespectful to the animal to put it in those terms. Killing the animal by wrestling it to death, that would be a sport.

If I can find a higher-res image of my blue rabbit urine photo, they are welcome to publish it.

Comments

[roaming.livejournal.com]

YOU do it. Doesn't mean someone else can. Don't judge others by yourself. Especially since we've never met and you don't know me.

And thanks for the creepy image of your bare hands on "Thumpers" neck. Like those people who join vegetarian communities just to post images of slaughtered bloody animals to squick people and get their knickers in a twist. Did you deliberately mean to be mean by posting that way? Is it fun for you? Get a kick out of it?

If so, I find that motivation more disgusting than the actual act.

I buy meat from a CSA. I know they kill the animals so it ends up on my plate. But *at least* they have good lives before, and a quick painless end. One may argue that death is death, and it doesn't matter whether the killer respects and thanks his prey (like Native Indian culture does) or gloats at its demise. But "when the fall is all there is, it matters."

[propaddict.livejournal.com]

Yikes!

Let's not read too much into this or take it as a personal affront. I merely meant to offer perspective, from the BTDT perspective. In response to your other charge: that is not my sole viewpoint on this topic, as I've observed similar in dozens of others in survival situations.

And I still stand by my original assessment. Despite attempts at unlearning/over-intellectualizing/demonizing our basic survival instincts, they're still there. And when you need them, they will help you overcome your aversions and prolong your life.

When you're out of that life-threatening situation, you return to your regular semblance of civility. That's it. No disgust, no value judgments, no righteous indignation required.

I'd be happy to continue this discussion via PM, but I'll stop the comment-jack here.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I don't mind you guys having this discussion here at all. They are exactly the kinds of ideas that fascinate me. But if you want to continue in a less public place that's fine. Propaddict, I wonder if your rabbit-eating story might need some context (I know the context, and I can see it being a little jarring to someone who doesn't know the story. Actually, the context itself is pretty jarring.) But anyway... do as you will.

There are lots of different ways to appreciate nature! Some are more visceral than others.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

sorry urbpan, if I came off a bit hostile. As I commented to propaddict, things look more blunt without tone of voice. Had I been able to say "did you mean to be mean?", my tone would have come off more "this is a question, let's have a discussion" than a smack back.

Glad you like discussion. Though I've had many of these, and I admit I find myself unconvinced. I'm pretty sure I can't undo my NYC girl upbringing anymore than, say, anyone from the south or midwest who grew up on a farm seeing animals as food rather than cuddly, anthropomorphized Disney characters, and probably has a lot more testosterone than I ever could, can see things from my perspective. :-) I usually know better than to even try to have the conversation. Every now and then it just runs right out into traffic before I can muzzle the little critter. :-)

[roaming.livejournal.com]

Okay. Good to know. BTW, things look more blunt in typing without tone of voice. I'm not miffed or angry, and not feeling hostile if that's how it came off. Actually asking. Maybe I need to use more smiling emoticons. :-)

I don't demonize our basic survival instincts. (And I can't know for sure what I'd do if I had to use them: just knowing me I'm betting I'd be among the first to not survive. Which would be fine with me, I don't want to live in that world.) I also don't glorify them, or use them as an excuse to "go native" and kill things because "waall, it was good enough for muh daddy, and muh daddy's daddy: it's Family Truhdisuhn."* But being a NYC born-and-bred city girl, I know that -- absent The Apocalypse and The Sky Falling -- the rules of the concrete jungle are different. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to know how to survive if one has to. Then again, how often does one "have" to? Unless one likes to go camping on snowbound mountaintops, or have oneself dropped with only a pocketknife and a paperclip into the middle of a Canadian wilderness. :-)

*(yeh, I admit to having my fair share of East Coast Urban snobbery. Or standards, depending on who's doing the judging. :-) Slavery used to be a tradition. Genital mutilation is a tradition. Stoning wives that are raped is a tradition. I'm sick of the excuse of "that's how we've always done it, so it's still a viable response to our environment." (Or the other Biblical excuse of "God gave Man 'dominion': as an agnostic slouching towards atheism, that leaves me unconvinced.) I heartily disagree with the tradition rationale. Clearly. :-) And no, not saying YOU are using that excuse. It's just the one I usually get when this kind of conversation comes up.)

[propaddict.livejournal.com]

Aside from it be Maine wilderness and not Canadian: you got me pegged. :)

And I agree re: tradition. It's no excuse. I view it as a baseline, like, "If nothing else, we know this works." I despise the view that tradition is an inexorable "we've always done it this way so that must be how to do it."

[roaming.livejournal.com]

heh. At least we know what our geographical personality types are: we don't need to consult the Meyers-Briggs handbook! ;-P

I try (and sometimes fail) to not be extreme. I'm not a vegan. I don't throw red paint on people who wear fur nor break into labs to free all the bunnies. (Though I admit to admiring the people with the guts to the latter, while being embarrassed by the former.) I think it's "okay" to raise and kill animals for food -- just not to torture them while we're doing it.

I hope that the little boy in that picture was being taught respect and compassion for the coyote along with killing skills. I want him be very proficient at making a clean and fast kill if he's going to do so. What I hear about more is exterminating them as "pests" and "vermin": words that carry the message of arrogant disrespect for living things. That's my "religion": that all life has something in common -- call it a "soul" for lack of any better description -- that makes us connected in a way that we probably can't put words to, but that doesn't matter, it's real. (okay, okay, yeh, I've just seen Avatar twice and loved it. Guilty! :-) ) I think Life owes other Life something. And vive la difference!