Mourning the goats...

Here in the Bay Area we have a cool thing going on where they use goat herds to clear weeds on public lands (or private owners can also rent a herd for the job). I have run into the herds on hikes and always enjoy seeing them and sometimes being able to pet them.

Thus, I was horrified this morning when I opened my paper and read the following:

"Someone armed with a small-caliber gun shot and killed 15 goats early Tuesday that were part of a herd hired to graze on fire-hazardous underbrush and weeds in the Oakland hills, police said."

I immediately felt a huge sadness and melancholy. They were just innocent creatures. And what kind of mind would contemplate such an outrage, let alone execute it?

But then, I began to think of an interesting session I had years ago when I was in therapy. I asked Dave (my shrink) why I could feel such intense sadness over the death or abuse of "dumb" animals and yet could not feel the same over starving children or tortured/killed people throughout the world. I was really concerned about this, feeling that I was deeply flawed. He talked me through it and we came to the following conclusion: Such outrages against human beings are against my own species. Thus, I cannot LET myself feel the pain and sadness like I do with animals. The enormity (look that word up in your dictionary) of that reality is just too much to open myself up to. If I feel as horrible as I do when it involves innocent animals, something inside me knows that I will simply not be able to handle it when it involves my own kind. I wish I could change this, but maybe I really don't.

Anyway, I'm mourning the goats today, and wondering if I can risk summoning up the same visceral feelings with respect to all the incredible outrages being committed or allowed by my so-called representative government, and other evil persons, against innocent humanity.

P.S. After my initial post, I remembered that I had taken some pictures of a herd while on a hike in the summer of 2001.







~ T.