Times - Creature Harmony

Robin respect for fellow creatures

By Kent Barker

            There’s an over-friendly Robin in my garden. She (though it could be a ‘he’ - both have red breasts) gets far too close for safety when I’m chopping wood or piling logs.  I’d hate anything to happen to her.  She’s become a friend.  I even find myself talking to her. The dog thinks I’m a bit batty but, hey, what’s new?

            Last spring she, or her predecessor, was camped outside the back door making a heck of a row.  I greeted her politely, admiring her plumage and went into the kitchen.  And she followed, flying round and round, and shrieking as if in distress.  “Come on, out you go”, I said ushering her back into the garden. But she soon returned.  And I soon found out why.  A little ball of brown downy feathers was wriggling on the floor under the dining table.  Now a baby Robin is just the most gorgeous thing to behold.  Rather like a teenager awakened around mid-day with it’s hair uncombed and in a disheveled onesie, this is not a thing of intrinsic beauty, but nevertheless your heart goes out to it.  Whether it’s the baby Robin or your hulking child.

            So somehow the fledgling had got in through the open door and was stuck under the table while mum was flying round in distress (yes, this is the Robin we’re talking about again now – do keep up). I like to think she was appealing for my help. Which was immediately given as I gingerly put her offspring in the palm of my hand and reunited them safely in the garden.

            Now come on, I hear you say, enough of this anthropomorphic claptrap.  Get to the point.  Well, the point is that a year or so back they were talking of culling Robins.  No, really! So many were nesting in vent pipes and chimney flues that they were said to be causing a hazard.  Perhaps culling is a bit of an exaggeration but certainly the proposal was for you to be allowed to destroy their nests and remove their eggs without a license.  Surely, I thought as I read this, surely it would be easier just to put some wire mesh over the pipe and prevent them getting in to begin with?

            But that doesn’t seem to be the British way.  If there’s an issue with a fellow creature, our instinct is to kill it rather than solve the problem.  Culling Badgers who might or might not be infected with TB, rather than vaccinating them, is a case in point.

            My starting point is to try share the planet in harmony with any and all creatures on it – unless they are actively threatening my existence or wellbeing.  We talk a lot about ‘human’ rights.  But woefully little about animal rights.  It’s as if we were in the pre-abolition era.  Slaves were not regarded as human so they could be treated as animals.  But hang on a minute. We are animals too.  Why should we treat the human species so differently from, say, Vulpes?  You can’t go out and shoot a human, but a fox is fair game.  It’s considered ‘vermin’ (was there ever a more disgusting appellation – designed to make the destruction of fellow creatures seem not just acceptable but positively virtuous.)

The fox is closely related to my dog as a member of the Canidae family, along with wolves and jackels, yet no one is trying to kill dogs.  Well, actuallty that’s not quite true.  Organised dog fighting is, amazingly, on the increase. Along with cock-fighting. Last year the RSPCA received nearly 600 calls relating to organised animal fighting.  And you can be sure that far more goes on that the charity is not alerted to.

So despite it being illegal for eighty years, some people still goad dogs to savage each other. We still slaughter badgers – 1,861 in the last ‘pilot’ culls and we still shoot millions – yes, millions – of pheasants and other birds out of the sky each year.

A friend of a Buddhist bent considers part of the problem being nomenclature.  If you refer to creatures as vermin or livestock you cheapen their intrinsic value. 

“Let’s replace the stock from the storeroom … let’s replace the livestock from sow pens or veal crates.”   It all becomes the same.

She’s got a problem with mice in the larder at the moment, but can’t bring herself to kill them.  Her suggestion was to use a non-lethal trap and take them to the local park for release. My guess was that – like the Flintstones’ cat refusing to be put out for the night -  the mice would simply run home and be waiting for her when she got back. But at least she’d have the satisfaction of knowing they were still alive.