The pity of it

Sometimes the vulnerability of the old dog brings me to my knees. His anxious, rheumy eyes; his weak and uncontrollable legs.

Of course, when he barks and lunges at other dogs, I feel as cross as when he was a puppy.

Cross. I've been too cross. Too demanding. Too avoidant. Too often ignored him. Too often refused to play with that damn stinky pink pig. Too often been impatient or overweening.

And I think of letting down other animals... a whole damn War and Peace worth of my crimes against the fauna. I think, maybe all my failures to... oh... be married or be a famous author or be a guru (yes, I'd like to be a guru) are payback for my crimes against fauna.

I ate meat for 14 years but that was not the worst of it. I treated domestic animals like they were 'animals' even though some of them were the best friends I ever would have. Mind you, I think I treated some humans badly too, which various former friends could describe.

But, beyond my crimes and misdemeanours, there is truly something so devastatingly touching about old animals... Ah, there is a book of photographs... Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries. It is terribly moving. But these were the ones who were not slaughtered.

There is no volunteering again this week - the tornado, the trees. One of the reserve officers said to me how sad it is... some are big trees, nearly a century old. What makes it so sad?

I think we expect trees to be strong. To be an icon of survival. To be beyond the slings and arrows of fortune. And we expect animals to be vital and lively. We conceive of suffering as human, somehow, while the natural world of flora and fauna should have this everlastingness, this eternal youthfulness, this vitality that we feel, with all our thinking and working and worrying, that we lack.

And somehow this justifies us using them for our ends. Because they are immune from harm and we are the vulnerable ones. Their death or sacrifice (at our hands) doesn't matter.

And then we see them, like us, subject to the same cruelties of fate and age, and it's a shock. They, like us, can fall.