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Animal Suicide pre-book the order HERE
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One dramatic life and death tale of Animal Suicide... |
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☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ It was the early 1970’s and the now esteemed professor of environmental studies was then a young intern at Sapsucker Woods Outdoor Education Center in upstate New York. A clear and sunny summer day was interrupted by the squeal of car brakes up on the nearby highway. He looked up the slope and saw a young woman, standing motionless, next to her car. As he strode up, the pieces of the puzzle came together. Her car had struck a woodchuck, a so-called ‘common’ groundhog. It was stunned, the entire back half of its torso and hind legs were flattened – smashed, crushed, broken beyond even miracles. A glazed look on its face, it began dragging itself in a small frenetic circle. The woman looked on, mortified, helpless. Quickly assessing the situation, he ran back to the center. His mentor, a tough and weathered old outdoorsman, grabbed the nearest implement to ‘dispatch’ the injured animal – to ‘put it out of its misery’. His tool of choice – a wooden baseball bat. As the two men ran up the slope, they were stopped in their tracks by what they next saw. The woodchuck ceased its dizzying circling, leaving its very life’s fluids in its broken body’s track. It paused. It raised its head and focused its sites. What followed next left the three humans stunned. The mammal, with its broken back and smashed hind legs, turned, then dragged itself to the side of the road. Next, it crawled down into the ditch. It then hauled itself up out of the ditch and from that horizon, headed down the next slope. It crawled, slowly, methodically, in a direct line through the grasses growing above its eye-level. It came to a fence, and with great and determined effort, it pushed itself under the chain linking. And then, it proceeded to the area that was fenced off. The pond. Groundhogs, common woodchucks, do not swim. They are not water mammals. They do not dive, swim, float, play in water. With unwavering intent, the groundhog deliberately crawled into the pond - to drown. This event, so long ago, has made me forever question the limits of our understanding – of animals, of instinct, of life and death and the individual and collective journeys through both. All that we know, every detail and fact, all that has been observed and recorded about animals, would fill a huge and impressive library to its rafters. And all that we do not yet know, well, that fills the rest of the universe…
Please, share any stories you may know of...... ....or your thoughts on this subject! (or to be informed when the book is ready) ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
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Copyright © 2006 [Talon Press] All rights reserved. |
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Do male insects, such as the praying mantis and black widow spiders, which are killed shortly after mating, know they will be killed, and yet prioritize the procreation of their species over their own well-being? |
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