Life and Death on the Ranch

‎I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.

-Melville, Moby Dick

I've encountered a good deal of death on the ranch, many instances of which make for disturbing stories and unsettling memories. A smattering of significant deaths: accidental decapitation of kitten; cow that accidentially bled out in the corral; the rotten horse in stagnant water; the dog got kicked in the head by a bull. It's never pleasant to encounter and rarely do people around me want to hear about it later. Anyone who knows me knows that that would never stop me, but more often than not, I don't tell these gruesome stories to gross people out. Talking about death is, for me, therapeutic. I helps me to put each specific death in context and reminds me of my own mortality. Most ranchers, I think, would understand this sentiment. As rough and tough as ranchers are, stories of life and death--both human and animal--are always near the surface. They are part of our cultural memory, and never something taboo. Unlike "city people," we cannot pretend to avoid death. And those of us who deal with it healthily, talk about it.

In addition to its status as part of our cultural vocabulary, talking about death serves another purpose: meaning-making. For the common or senseless or casual animal death, telling other people about it makes it seem less common, senseless, and casual.

Take the other day, for instance. My mother was walking up our (1/2 mile) driveway to get the mail, and the dogs were walking with her. They sniffed out a stray prairie dog, one that we call a "scout," looking for someplace to start up a new colony. One dog chased it until it fatigued, and the other picked it up in its mouth and ran with it back to the house. My mother later found it there. The dog hadn't finished it off, she had merely broken its spine so that it dragged its hind feet on the ground, lifeless. She told me it was out there, and I grabbed a gun, a .17 with a scope set for 50 meters or so. I sighted in, but made sure to aim well below to account for the proximity of the beast. The first shot almost certainly missed--I tried again. It didn't occur to me during this time that the humane, though more difficult, thing to do was to put the gun right up to its head; no missing, no time waiting to bleed out. It looked at me, seeming to plead for death. I obliged it, though it didn't die immediately. I was out of rounds, though, so just in case I had missed the second time, I went in the house and grabbed by .22 and fired a couple more times, though it was no longer moving at that point. My mother came and disposed of the remains. She later felt bad that she had done nothing to stop the dogs, but at the same time reminded herself and me that the animal is a pest and needed to be killed to prevent his friends from following.

The story itself is nothing. It's sad, meaningless, unstoppable in its progression from start to finish. As soon as it was discovered, the dog was going to die. But the recounting of the story, it's real relation to other human beings, gives that pathetic, broken, now-rotting creature a chance to live in memory. It means nothing to the prairie dog itself, but it does mean something to me.

The same could be said of any other of the other stories I could recount (don't worry, I won't, at least not now). Humans are meaning-making creatures, we thrive on our ability to make sense of the world around us. This claim need not be either an agnostic claim or a theistic one, but it can be either. Ranchers are storytellers, and in so doing, they experience and interpret the life and death around them, creating meaningful events where such meanings are not easily apparent.

Here is where the Melville quote at the beginning comes in. For ranchers, death is a meaningful event. They recognize and acknowledge its tragedy while shaping it in the context of their lives as a whole. Their attitude can seem nonchalant, even careless. In this way, the rancher can seem to be the "Fejee" of Melville's story. But the truth of the matter is deeper. The truth is that through such casual recollection of the end of various lives, ranchers acknowledge the power of death and yet assert their own power to control it by presenting a meaning for what is of itself wholly meaningless. Do "city people" thus acknowledge death? Do they recognize that their next (non-vegetarian) meal meant the end of another creature's existence? O civilized gourmand! Do you not know that your ribeye was earned at the cost of many stripes? That years of unthinking mowing were summed up at the point of an air-gun? That a heart bled and finally stopped forever on account of your insatiable appetite?

Don't get me wrong, I'm no "greeny weeny." But as wrong as the absolute equation of human and animal life is, the absolute subordination of animal life to any and every human use of it is perhaps worse. Augustine says that the world is to be used, not abused--and it most certainly can be abused. Each animal that passes through the doors of the slaughterhouse meets its end in meaningless pain, but that meaninglessness is changed into its opposite only if we dare to recall the story of those deceased creatures of God. It cannot rightfully pass into our stomach without first passing through our thoughts and--yes--even our prayers. If we respect that life by remembering its death, then perhaps we can hope to share in the light judgment that awaits Melville's Fejee at the end of time.