Happy Easter to all my gentile friends, and Happy
Passover to the members of my tribe. Because it is Easter Monday, and you are
probably all by now recovering from your big Easter Sunday feasts, I think now
is a fitting time to reprise my rabbit lab story. Forgive me if you’ve read it
before, but with reference to a report I wrote a few weeks ago about the
balance of nature, it recounts one of the more important lessons I learned in
high school, and one of the few I still remember. Sit back and read about the
time I killed a bunny.
In Grade 11 I took a science class called “Man In
Nature”. It was taught by a man named Neil Currie, and Neil was at the time an
active member of The Sierra Club. Judgmental punk that I was, I thought old
Neil was a bit of a nerd, uncool because he was an avid bird watcher and a nature
lover. While I and my scofflaw friends were out playing hooky, up to no good on
a nearby golf course, we’d sometimes see Mr. Currie, dressed up in his khaki shorts
and knee-high socks, sporting his Tilley hat, with his binoculars around his
neck, observing the many species of birds on campus. What a geek.
One day in class, Neil began to discuss man’s carnivorous
nature, and he suggested that most of us had become detached from the process
of obtaining meat. Show of hands, how many of us eat meat? How many of us had
ever watched meat being butchered? How many of us had ever killed an animal
ourselves then skinned and ate it?
His point was that we were a society of carnivores who was becoming further and
further detached from the harsh reality of killing and eating our prey. Suddenly
Neil wasn’t the geek wearing the Tilley hat anymore. He had lived in the wild,
in conditions that I would describe as extreme camping, and he had a much
clearer understanding of the laws of Nature than we did. Finally, he moved in
for the close, which none of us saw coming. How many of us would agree to kill,
butcher, and eat a rabbit, as an “experiment” in re-connecting with our inner
carnivore? He rather ingeniously persuaded us to agree, and while no one was
forced to participate in the experiment, almost everyone signed on for what
would ultimately be a life-changing experience.
A week or so later, we the participants gathered outside
the science building, and a man showed up, a rabbit farmer, to instruct us in the
proper way to kill and butcher a rabbit. He wasted no time. From a cage full of
rabbits, he reached in and grabbed one by the hind legs and, with what looked
like a police baton, struck it on the head with great force. The rabbit
shuddered for a moment and then, in an instant it was dead. Before we could
react to what we had just seen, the man pulled out a butcher’s knife, cut off
its head, and began to skin and butcher the dead animal. The whole process took
maybe 3 minutes, and by the time it was all through, most of us were
speechless. We were then called upon to form teams of two and to repeat what we
had just observed. Now that it was getting real, a few more people lost their
nerve and backed out, but I and most of the class participated.
I will not recount the chaos which ensued, but let it
suffice to say that some of us are more successful at bunny butchering than
others. In the end though, and in some cases with the assistance of the expert,
we all managed to kill, skin, and butcher our rabbits. It was life-changing for
me.Some of you reading this will ask yourselves what kind
of a crazy, irresponsible teacher would encourage such a traumatic experience
for his young and impressionable students. I am quite certain that this kind of
learning experience would never be condoned by school authorities today, but
things were a little different in 1973. In retrospect, I think what Neil did
was brilliant. This science lab taught me a lot more than I would have ever learned
from dissecting a frog. Anybody who was brought up on a farm, or who lived in a
family of hunters would not be shocked or appalled by what we did, but this
experience was monumental for a bunch of spoiled, jaded city kids who thought
meat magically appeared in supermarket shelves. It was one of the most
important lessons I’ve learned to date.
A week or so later, we had a barbecue at Neil Currie’s
house, and you guessed it, rabbit was the main course. It was delicious, and
there was a certain closure involved in eating the animals we had killed and
butchered. I never want to do it again, anymore than I ever again want to
rebuild the engine in a 1967 Triumph Spitfire, which I once did. Once was
enough, but the lesson was learned. I think about that rabbit lab almost every
time I browse the meat counter in a supermarket, and I now have a healthier understanding
of the process of butchering meat. I am also more acutely aware of and
sensitive to the ways in which man traumatizes and abuses animals.
There are many reasons why people become vegetarians. For
some people meat is too expensive, others find it hard to digest. Some
vegetarians simply object to killing any animals for food. I understand that,
and I respect their choice. Having been through the process of killing and
eating my own animal, I remain a carnivore. Because of that rabbit lab, I am perhaps
a little more connected to the process. I think there are a few hypocrites among
the militant animal rights zealots, because there are many ways we contribute
to the death of animals other than by eating them. We wear leather shoes and
other leather clothing, and animal by-products are used in a large variety of products
that people use. I am now perhaps a little more mindful of my place in the food
chain. Mother Nature takes no prisoners, and for me it is important to have
some kind of understanding of my place in the natural world. In my opinion, we
as a species are going in the wrong direction where this is concerned, and our ignorance of and disregard
for the laws of nature will haunt us.
A girl friend of mine, who is a holistic medicine
practitioner by profession, responded to an article I wrote recently about
songwriter Jon Brooks, and more specifically about his album of murder anthems.
She commented somewhat cynically that “we kill everything in the end”. I killed a
rabbit once, and it changed my life.
- Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2018 ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED
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