Pondering of life and death-taking a side
karasti
BreathingMinnesota Moderator
We've discussed this into the ground, so that is not the purpose of my posting. It's just something I was pondering.
Yesterday I was mowing the lawn and over a small hole in the yard was an intricate spiderweb. I saw a small spider moving back and forth across it so I stopped to observe. In the middle of the web, was a tiny (quarter inch maybe) baby grasshopper. It was stuck, and the spider was circling to take it. I must have interrupted the spider's process, it retreated quickly to the side of the web. I stood watching, pondering what to do. Rescue the grasshopper from certain death? Or remove the grasshopper and possibly sentence the spider to death? I actually thought about this quite a lot. In the end, I rescued the grasshopper while attempting to do as little damage as possible to the spiderweb. I can't sit over every web in our yard and basement, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. Being in the right place at the right time, it seemed like a good thing to release the grasshopper. For all I know, a bird at it 2 minutes later.
On the flip side of that, I spent 10 hours fishing with my dad the other day. We brought home a few fish, all of which my dad took home. We released many more than we caught. While fishing, we watched a bald eagle nest, where a mama had just caught a fish and was feeding her babies.
The cycle of life is interesting to observe. We hold a lot of power. How to best use it, isn't always clear. At least to me.
Picture of mama and one of the 2 eaglets:
Comments
I agonize over exactly this myself. I wasn't brought up in a family with hunting and fishing, my sister and I were raised by a single mom who simply didn't have time to take us on such "recreational" activities. I was taken fishing by the neighbors when I was pretty young, and I couldn't stand to see the fish being killed. I have never been fishing since, and I could certainly never hunt. But I definitely cause the deaths of animals when I eat meat or fish, so I'm unquestionably not completely clean.
In your situation I would have rescued the grasshopper too. The eagles are beautiful, magnificent, carnivorous. For myself, I've decided that I can't prevent killing in the world, but I can greatly reduce my contribution toward it. But it's not a stance I'm fully at peace with, and probably never will be.
Kia Ora,
One could look at it this way... When it comes to the 'cycle of life' (intentionally or unintentionally) we are just the tools used to fulfill each others karma( karmic experience)...But I could be wrong...
Metta Shoshin .
..
Perhaps gently . . .
like a starving eagle,b feeding chicks with its own flesh . . .
or a grasshopper giving up its life for a spider . . .
It is good you can ask these questions. Wonderful in fact. Recently I went to Downes House, where top ape and atheist author of 'origin of the spices', Charles Darwin, wrote and lived. OK that should be species but @fedirica is still evolving beyond correctitude and I rather like the spell checks selection.
.
. . . just hope I can get beyond 'monkey mind'
Bonus Lyrics from Species Girls:
Shake it shake it shake it, haka!
Shake it shake it shake it, haka!
Arriba!!!
Colours of the world
Spice up your life
Every boy and girl
Spice up your life
Every boy and girl
Spice up your life
People of the world
Spice up your life
Aaahh!!!
As a young boy I had snakes and other "exotic" pets like lizards. I fed the snakes live mice and baby rats and the lizards would get live crickets. I didn't enjoy watching them eat, but it was that whole circle of life thing. And right now I have a couple of web spiders on my back porch and sometimes watch them eating a fly or moth. That's our ecosystem at work.
I remember walking into one pet store and asking to buy a couple of feeder mice. The manager of the store said it was company policy not to sell live mice that were going to be fed to a snake but they stocked dead frozen mice and I should train the snake to eat those. I told the manager he was crazy and went elsewhere.
Stop and think. Someone, somewhere has to kill the mice, in this case lots of mice at once in order to bag and sell them to the stores in bulk. Did this mouse breeder worry about killing them quickly and painlessly? Of course not. Probably just tossed them into a big freezer and let them freeze to death, since that's the most efficient method. And the store owner thought that was more humane?
My Buddhist practice tells me following the Dharma means not killing. My common sense and reality tells me without death and killing, life couldn't exist and anything like a normal life is impossible if I try to not kill at all. In an effort to accommodate both view points, some people say it's OK if someone else does the killing for me. But my sense of morality tells me if I eat a steak, I'm only fooling myself if I think there's a difference because I didn't actually kill the cow but had someone do that nasty, unpleasant task for me.
I found my own middle way, but first I had to struggle with the paradox. I think the struggle is important.
Good example of dukkha. Thanks for sharing this story.
Actually, in the UK it's illegal to sell live food for snakes.
If you purchase reptiles, do so from a reputable dealer, and ensure they have been captive-bred. Then you will have no problem feeding them already-killed food.
Even feeding a caught snake isn't a problem. You simply make sure the food item is completely thawed and brought up to room temperature. wave it around in front of the snake's snout and it won't hang about....
There are regulations in the UK about how to kill food for reptiles 'humanely' and usually it's done by quasi-immediate electrocution.
You put them in a box, you shut the lid, you close the box, you flick the switch and fewer than 10 seconds later you open it again - and the rats are dead.
That said, admittedly, I could not even face the thought of having to do this.
Another method is apparently to use bicarbonate of soda, in vinegar, in a closed box. This creates CO2 which the rats cannot breathe. They become unconscious, pass out then die.
However, I don't know the proportions, nor how long it takes to be effective.
I'd leave that one to the experts.
incidentally, I too used to have snakes, and no longer do.
A quick chop to the back of the head before dropping them into the cage while holding the mouse or rat by the tail also kills them quickly and they're still warm and fresh enough to trigger the strike behavior of the snake. Of course in the end, you still have a dead rodent and a hungry snake being fed. Laws against selling live rodents for food are ludicrous, in my own biased opinion. Snake owners end up just raising their own supply and most rodents sold as pets come to a bad end, anyway, from neglect or abuse or escape. Done right, owning pets as a child teaches one responsibility and an appreciation for life, and death as the case may be. I'd never heard of electrocuting or gassing the beasties. Fascinating.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. In the UK, I belonged to a Herpetological Society, and the feeding of live food was totally taboo and frowned upon. I repeat, it IS illegal in the UK, and as such, even if herpetologists did raise their own rats/mice and whatever, they always killed them prior to feeding.
On one occasion, a new member who actually proudly boasted that he supplied his pet with live mice, found a police officer and an RSPCA Inspector on his doorstep less than a day later. He ended up with both snake and mice, confiscated.
Quite apart from the cruelty factor (!) there was always the possibility of a rodent objecting to being a snake's next meal and possibly fighting back.
I know a guy in the USA who lost not one, but 2 snakes that way, through the rats not hanging about and waiting to be caught, but assaulting the snake and biting through its neck.
It's just foolhardy to take the risk, as far as folks here is concerned.
Speaking of life and death and the process...anyone else watching PBS Sex in the Wild ?
It has sparked wonderful discussions in my house. They follow animals reproductive cycles...from mating...to pregnacy....birth...and then up to death.
My youngest ( Adjua) upon seeing the Mother elephant die...was " Awww...that was sad...I know you will one day die too Mommy.....and then I will too."
Discussing death openly and in 'nature,science way' really has made the whole topic easier to approach. Watching the nature shows also brings discussions about the way the life cycle/death/eating is par for the course. She wants to save alot of animals from the webs we have outside...but then she'll say..." I know he needs to eat, and maybe that's a mommy spider that has babies that need to eat." I stand there and let her go back and forth about it and tell her it's up to her. She usually ends up saying..."I don't want to take his food...they work pretty hard for it" ....
Would a round of applause for the supposed dinner item be inappropriate, politically or dharmically incorrect?
So be it . . .
Cue 'Ben' . . .
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_(song)
Sorry for my absence, we went out of town for a long weekend. Thank you for your thoughts
I appreciate all the sharing of stories. Interesting about the animals in the UK. Here, they mostly just do not ask. You can buy really cheap mice and rats (like $2) alive. You can also buy insects and worms, and minnows alive, for feeding. We have a captive bred leapard gecko who will not eat anything that is not alive. For him, the hunting is what he looks to do, and if there is nothing to hunt he will not eat it. He won't even eat live mealworms unless he has no other choice, no hunting involved with them, either. We had a snake at one point who ate frozen rats just fine. I was also just fine with trading the snake for a hedgehog, lol. I like snakes, but I did not like the feeding of the rats.
It's interesting, the way we take in the world around us, including our own.
Hmm this is always a hard one. I would say personally to let nature take it's course.
People tend to impute there own suffering into other animals and as such treat them as humans in a way.
I think the world has only one chance of survival with humans. If humans stop trying to fix the world. It was never broken
Very well said @Earthninja. As 'homo superiors' develop we will be redundant.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhuman
Personally I feel in part this will be a merging of our insatiable appetite to modify our environment and digital and biological technology integration. Nature is awesome. Terrifying. Relentless. Our friend. Our extinction. Our nemesis. Our dukkha. Our transcendence.
Bring it on.
My hero is incognito today . . .
On another site, one of the member's description ran something like: "I save animals and insects for them to believe there's good luck."
Somehow the phrase stayed with me, as badly quoted as I remember it, and I have been saving animals and insects from nature's ruthless predicaments eversince.
Hubby is a born animal crusader, so he's been doing it for longer than I do.
Last week it happend to be a bumble-bee. Second one in my records. It was fluttering about the floor, for some reason unable to take off, among a crowd in an amusement park.
Bumble-bees must have a kamikaze streak for the other one I rescued was in the same situation (I'm a city slicker, what do I know?)
Did it live five minutes more? Two days more? Is it still alive?
But was I going to abandon it to its fate? Who knows by what invisible hand I have been spared from atrocious happenstances myself many times?
My philosophy is to accept what I can't change, but do everything within my reach to change what I can change. Sorry nature, whenever I can I'm your nemesis...
Bumble bees need to gorge themselves on nectar continuously, to maintain the energy to stay airborne. If they go longer than 15 - 40 minutes (it depends on the variety) they will lose energy, crash to the floor, be unable to take off again, and more often than not either be crushed or die.
I have 'saved' several bumble-bees by picking them up and letting them drink something sweet, like some water with honey dissolved in it (ideal; this is, after all, what nectar actually is.... honey, before it becomes concentrated....)
There is something quite gratifying about picking up a barely-crawling bumble-bee, giving it a long welcome drink, and watching it fly off, newly-invigorated....
Naturally, being out-and-about, this isn't always possible. Try to find a plant with lots of flowers which are attractive to bees.
But that's ususally the problem.
If a bee won't drink, it's probably on its way out anyway....
I personally think if we are able to help, we should. We stop constantly to usher turtles across the highways to help reduce the carnage. Some of the are limited in number and need some help to keep going. Very few survive to adult hood. But, we humans and our cars are part of "nature" now too, so why not let that take it's course and continue to see the numbers of snapping turtles decrease due to death by car, rather than helping them? That kind of thinking doesn't make sense to me.
The natural world definitely knows how to run itself better than we could fathom. However, our interjecting ourselves into that world in the manner that we have, puts us at a higher responsibility towards the animals we have made homeless, have polluted, have starved. We cause harm to almost every species on the planet, which is something no other species has "accomplished" and for me, I think we owe it to them to help when we can. The best way to do that isn't always clear. But leaving animals to suffer and die when they don't have to seems cruel to me.