Animal Writings

The editorials in the previous two posts preached that the struggle to end human-inflicted animal suffering should be non-violent. Which makes perfect sense.

And yet...

What if a research laboratory was torturing your companion animal? (It happens, all right. Read this heartbreaking account of a family's beloved dog, still with his ID tag, taken from the shelter, and brutally killed in an animal lab.) Would you let him suffer because of risk of bad press? You might very well break down doors to get him out of there.

Should the lab animals who have never experienced a cozy home be treated any differently? Do they deserve any less?

Suppose you saw a trainer beating a circus elephant, ceaselessly, over and over, whipping the sharp points of the bullhook into the tender flesh behind the elephant's knees and on top of her feet? Suppose the elephant was screaming, crouching in fear? Could you just stand there? Might you be tempted to steal the bullhook, to stop abuse? To stop the torture of an innocent elephant? You might be breaking several laws in doing that. In some scenarios, you might be considered a terrorist.

If you saw a stray kitten whose leg was caught in a steel-jaw leghold trap, who was struggling to the point of exhaustion, the jaws of the trap clenched on her crushed paw, would you be tempted to smash that trap to free the kitten? Well, you'd be acting illegally. You'd be a criminal. But guess what, the trapper would not. You'd be convicted of burglary. The trapper would be free to continue inflicting suffering and awful death on innocent animals.

As mentioned three posts ago, the rage that causes people to directly rescue animal victims of human meanness does not come out of thin air. Everyone—including you—has their breaking point. Where they simply cannot bear to let injustice and undeserved, preventable, extreme suffering continue. Where they are compelled to free helpless victims from cruelty.

The Bible cautions us that we will be judged by how we treat "the least of these". Well, the animals trapped in factory farms, circuses and laboratories, confined in cages and chains, are the "least of these." Perhaps the Bible issues this warning because it is when dealing with animals whom we can completely dominate and subdue, and who have no legal rights, that we are most tempted to take unfair and unrestrained advantage of our power. I'm heartened that there are people who care so much about the least of these that they are willing to go to jail for them, that they will risk their own comfort and well-being to rescue them from the clutches of human-imposed misery.