The Awakening

The writer last September with a flock of pigeons in Central Park.

It is strange how an early childhood experience can sometimes serve as an awakening for us and set the pathway for our later lives.

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I recall when about 7-years-old and playing ball with friends on a Manhattan street. I noted a pigeon struck by a car and flailing to the ground. I ran and picked up the fluttering bird in my hands and looked down on him, wondering what to do? I could feel his heart racing in my tiny hands and his body trembling.

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And then suddenly, the pounding of his heart ceased and the pigeon was still.

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"He's dead." my friend, Paulie said somberly.

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Suddenly horrified, I dropped the pigeon to the sidewalk and ran home, crying to my grandmother.

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I was inconsolable and overwhelmed by a sense of having failed the fatally injured bird. Surely he had died because I had picked him up and didn't act fast enough to help him!

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But my grandmother reassured that the pigeon's death was not my fault and that there was nothing that could have saved him. At least he died in tender hands, knowing he was loved, however briefly.

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My grandmother then added, "There will be other pigeons and animals that you will one day be able to save."

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As matters turned out, it was less than a year later, I found a pigeon who had a broken wing. I brought him home where my grandmother cleverly created a splint from popsicle sticks (She grew up on a farm in Ireland with animals and was familiar with down-home remedies) and prepared a box lined with newspapers for him.

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Gradually, with good nursing and time "Chipper's" wing healed. Within a couple of months, he was flying through our hallways -- something that caused my mother to scream, "Jesus, it's like having a bat!"

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In the spring, Chipper found a girlfriend and flew from the fire-escape that had primarily been his home. The two pigeons routinely came back to visit us.

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But, Chipper was not my one and only rescue. Just the first of thousands (mostly cats and dogs, but also a few birds) that would occur over a lifetime.

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I was lucky to have a grandmother who was so understanding and supportive. More importantly, Nanny (as I called her) was a tremendous influence and inspiration to me.

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Reading this Daily News Op-Ed yesterday from Mercy for Animals, founder, Nathan Runkle, reminded of my personal and early animal experience that helped awaken and set a pathway for later life endeavors. Runkle too, experienced a type of early trauma with a baby pig that would, in his case, set a life course.

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http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/nathan-runkle-cecils-midst-article-1.2316603?cid=bitly

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Some reading this Op Ed might cynically accuse it of "conflating issues" or the writer taking advantage of public sentiment and empathy for Cecil (the cherished lion killed in Africa last month for the purpose of trophy) to draw attention to the issue of factory farming and the billions of animals subjected to cruelty and slaughter for the sake of the human palate. But I don't read it that way.

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True, that unlike lions and other endangered animals, pigs, chickens and cows are not tottering on the verge of extinction. Nor are they killed for bragging rights or to be mounted on walls.

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But the unpardonable crowding, confinement and tyranny that billions of animals are subjected to everyday is no less cruel than the blowing away of rare and endangered African wildlife for the sake of human want and power or the "management" of native wildlife as "sustainable" hunting targets.  Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.  

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One can never be sure, but it is hoped that human awakening and the winds of change are finally in the air -- all symbolized by a lion named Cecil whose unjustifiable death was a kind of trauma for us all. Like the small child experiencing life leave the fatally wounded bird in her hands, we all experience the loss of our world's wildlife to the hands of lust and greed and begin to question our overall treatment of the earth's other creatures.

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A great President once said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

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Perhaps it's time we say to ourselves, "Ask not what animals can do for us. Ask what we can do for the animals, the planet and humanity."

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Despite the untrue claims of some, the answer is usually the same, as awareness and empathy for one is benefit for all. Just as things such as indifference, callousness and narcissism can become like infectious disease, the cures are to be found in connection and emotional relatability to the earth, animals and people around us. It is ultimately not that difficult to live without relying on the exploitation and deaths of other animals to sustain us. Advanced and ever improving replacements now exist for meat, dairy, leather, suede, down and lethal animal experiments.  And wildlife and animals are far more pleasureable when alive and teaching us about the wonders of life and nature via personal observations, films and photos than as lifeless heads on a wall or bloody remains on a plate.

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The childhood experience of feeling a terminally injured pigeon perish in my helpless hands was traumatic and tear-filled. But thanks to the wise and consoling words of my grandmother, it was not end unto itself.  Rather, it was the beginning of all things positive and life affirming.

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It is hoped that the tragic death of Cecil the lion can serve as beginning of all things wonderful and healing for the animals and the humans of our world -- a new and expansive definition for connections and relationship and a new awakening.  -- PCA

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