News of the destruction of a pair of area mountain lions led to the discovery of a disgraceful online portfolio of happy hunters
By William Campbell
February 1, 2005
After a brisk 6 a.m. walk with Susan and Shadow over Sunset up the Micheltorena steps and down the Music Box Steps, with a stop at Cafe Tropical for a couple to-go cafe mochas, we got back home and I had time enough to read the paper and find this headline in the Outdoors section of today’s L.A. Times:
Poisons Claim Two L.A. Area Cougars
The four-paragraph brief by Gary Polakovic cursorily explains that two mountain lions whose territory included the Santa Susana mountains near Valencia died late last fall after apparently ingesting prey loaded with poisons that humans use to get rid of rodents.
The article does not offer any distinction or direction as to whether officials think the poisonings were done intentionally or whether the big cats simply ingested the prey items that themselves consumed rodenticides that are reported to be used in schools, golf courses, and public parks.
Given the esteem within which I hold all creatures great and small, I’m hoping it’s the latter. Praying even. I can’t fathom the heartless failures of humanity that would intentionally and so cowardly destroy such extraordinary beings.
Of course, I went online to find a nice picture of a mountain lion — and there certainly were a lot from which to choose. But the pages upon pages of displayed puma pix were also plentifully pocked with snaps of happy hunters proudly posing with dead versions of the top-shelf predators. And while I try not to begrudge anyone their pursuit of happiness, I will never comprehend the thrill to be found in taking a gun or a crossbow and/or some dogs and hunting down and killing anything for sport.
Even greater is my confoundment after looking at some of those who do find so much pride and joy in so much destruction of so much beauty.
If the following display offends you, go ahead and kill the messenger if you’d like,. Just remember I’m not the one that pulled the triggers or loosed the arrows or set the dogs upon any of the 10 dead pumas I’ve pasted here — and there’s plenty more where these came from. Just Google up “mountain lion” and see for yourself.
I’m sure proponents can provide strident arguments as to the importance of predator predation in helping maintain nature’s balance. And as emotionally wound up as I am I wouldn’t disagree with such an assertion. I recognize that a world with too many mountain lions can bring fates for them worse then those fired from a gun or a bow.
Nevertheless, I say to the people pictured below: You are nothing. You are of even less dimension in life than you are in the photographs in which you appear.
You have earned nothing with your violence. No pride. No glory.
There is neither to be found in the thieving of life. To celebrate your deed as an achievement is a lie.
You have proved nothing but that you have the coldness in your heart to bring death into the world and to applaud your ability to destroy.
In the lifeless bodies you lift and shoulder and pose with and smile so vapidly over, you see a trophy whose head is to mount on a wall or whose paws can be turned into bookends on a shelf, or whose teeth and claws can be made into a necklace.
You see a vanquished foe.
I see a magnificent creature that even in death still has a greatness and nobility that you cannot steal despite your efforts.
Perhaps later you will attempt to reduce the animal to nothing more than a tale that boasts of your ability to move about and search and aim and shoot.
It is you who have been reduced. And in doing so you have reduced me. You have reduced mankind.
You have trivialized life itself. Dismissed its importance. Turned the taking of it into entertainment.
To you it is a weaker thing to let something so beatiful and agile and strong and free out of your gunsights so that it may continue to be.
To me it is far weaker not to.
4 Responses to “ An Unfathomable Find ”
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November 11th, 2008 at 7:00 am[...] up on four years ago I spewed out and posted An Unfathomable Find a pretty raw reaction to what I found online in the wake of the news of two mountain lions being [...]
October 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
SO TRUE, WHY KILL SOMETHING SO MAGNIFECINT FOR YOUR OWN PRIDE AND BOAST,A CREATRE SO BEAUTIFUL SHOULD NEVER BE BROUGHT DOWN WITHA GUN WHILE YOU SIT MILES AWAY SHAKEING, NEVER ABLE TO FACE IT YOURSELF, AT THE TRIGGER WATCHING YOUR DOG FIGHT THE BEAUTIFUL BEAST THE ONLY TRUE MONSTER IS YOUR DRIVE TO KILL, SUCH A GLORIOUS CAT’S LIFE FOR YOUR OWN COWARDIOUS PRIDE.
March 12th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I do not know what the population/environmental balance is in the areas these beautiful creatures inhabit; their prey and habitat constraints. I suspect that the states have reasons for allow the hunting. I do not know what balance of interests the decisions represented. I do know that most hard core naturalists, rangers, US Fish and Wildlife Service Officers, and even real environmentalists, know, understand, and support regulated hunting. I do know the pumas, cougars, mountain lions or whatever name you use for them, have the largest (even if highly fragmented) range of any cat, larger than any other terrestrial species I can think of (certainly the large ones), from extreme S.E. Alaska to near Tierra del Fuego (if I remember correctly).
While I hate even the thought of killing something just to kill, and do not understand why any adult would do that, the motivations and emotions behind it are as varied and complex as the people that do the killing. To think you understand it without being those people is just ridiculous, and as long as the hunting is taking place within a framework that is based on sound environmental management principles, I do not see it as harmful or wrong, but even potentially beneficial to the species and admittedly marginal habitat they have left. It’s a strange but true thing that the very people that kill things, seem to want those things around to kill and often fight hardest to preserve that balance. Work to protect the species’ habitat and strengthen the environmental laws and natural selection will take care of the rest: That is the greatest and most useful kindness you can show them; individually or as a species.
I do not get the “gloating over the kill” part of things, but hunting and killing to use the meat and pelt is also part and parcel to all human existence until very recently. As such, I have no problem with it: Life requires death at some level. What changes is the definition of life and the degrees of removal. Unless one lives a truly vegan life (both diet and product consumption) you are simply supporting proxy killing: You are not absolved of ANY of the responsibility for the killing being done by others for you. AND, for the record, NONE of us lives a truly killing free existence — we just pick different levels to say “anything below this “level” doesn’t matter to us.” — We specify different degrees of separation. No house, road, or product was ever built that didn’t involve killing something or destroying its habitat and letting nature do it for us.
Further, if we want to get into supposed and hypothetical “nobility” issues, then I find the whole argument ridiculous: Is predator more noble than prey; larger more noble than smaller?
I know it feels good to lash out at the destruction of things that we assume to be objectively, or feel to be subjectively “beautiful”, or momentarily useful (and I do it too) but if we are being fair, don’t all living things great and small, beautiful and ugly, deserve the same treatment?
March 12th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for your very thoughtful comments to my four-year-old post. You make some very valid points that I can entirely agree with and appreciate.
In fact maybe you missed where I make reference along the lines of understanding the need for structured, controlled hunting lines early on in the piece:
“I’m sure proponents can provide strident arguments as to the importance of predator predation in helping maintain nature’s balance. And as emotionally wound up as I am I wouldn’t disagree with such an assertion. I recognize that a world with too many mountain lions can bring fates for them worse then those fired from a gun or a bow.”
You may find some of what I wrote as presumptive and ridiculous or unfair, but I can only invite you to understand that the outrage I expressed stemmed from news of the unlawful and entirely cowardly killing of two mountain lions in the Southern California area. This despicable act occured in a state where hunting mountain lions has been illegal since 1990.
The anger I felt was then compounded by the surprising avalanche of photos I discovered online of people gloating over the creatures they’d killed.
As I said I agree with a lot of what you wrote (though if anyone’s killing cougars for meat, that might be enough to make me go vegetarian). Clearly I don’t know the circumstances behind the pictures I posted nor the persons involved, but just as most of those people would not apologize for posting the pride they have in the destruction they’ve wrought, neither am I going to apologize for the judgments I made or the protectionist instinct I have for the creature they’ve elected to destroy.
As to the nobility of all life forms, that is something I firmly believe in. I don’t reserve such pride for something because of its size. In fact, my blog is littered over the years with posts in which I offer respect and compassion and protection to a wide variety of species. You’re writing to a guy who took pains to reunite a group of baby rats with its mother after I accidentally disturbed their nest. I find glory in a black widow and will open a window screen or a door to free a fly.
If you want to make me part of the problem because there’s a leather jacket in my closet or because I don’t elect to subsist on sprouts and rainwater then I’m guilty as charged.
But if you insist that makes me a hypocrite, I’ll just have to respectfully disagree.