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It’s so easy to think of animals as “other” and as “lesser.”
One day my son scuffled a little anthill on the sidewalk out of existence just for the fun of it. Now maybe you think I was being picky when I reprimanded him and told him not to do it again. As my son said, “But, Mom, they can just build another.” So I responded, “If a lion came over here and swiped our car out of existence just for the fun of it and we had to go find a new one, how would that make you feel??” (I know, my on-the-fly parenting metaphors can get pretty ridiculous!) I could see him thinking about it, and I have hope that maybe next time he won’t undo the ant’s work just for fun which means some distant day in the future he won’t spray-paint a building just for fun and he won’t tie tin cans onto a dog’s tail just for fun and he will care about his friends and he will, hopefully, care about his enemies and the world will be a better place.
My husband farms organic vegetables and hunts most of our meat. I am so glad he is passing these things on to our son. Our son is 4-years-old and, besides loving dinosaurs and playing with Legos, his favorite things are working in the garden with Papa and going out in the woods with him. My husband said our son didn’t even flinch the first time he saw a wild turkey get shot, he just skipped around getting soaked by the mist-covered alfalfa while gobbling with his turkey call and delighting in everything.
I want our son to know where his food comes from. I want him to connect viscerally with the calories that support his life force. The more we know about what it takes to survive, the more compassionate we are in all aspects of our lives. I want him to know he can get food for himself. I want our son to feel his strength and know he can own the process of feeding himself. I want him to be resilient for the rocky decades ahead of us. I want him to pass this resilience on.
Above all, I want him to know the animals we eat are conscious and have feelings.
When you spend a quiet afternoon watching deer nibbling on acorns, you know when you take that life that it was a life, not a thing. We are all connected in this web of life and the animals we eat are equally as important in the big picture as we are. Contrary to popular opinion, hunting can be a powerful tool for passing on compassion to our sons.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock