A damaged bird- to kill or not

[skydove]

I was wondering how people would relate to this experience and what they would do.
Yesterday a blackbird flew into my greenhouse then knocked itself out trying to escape, it was still alive but I couldn't tell if it was badly injured. I put it in a shady spot in the garden hoping it would recover and kept my eye on it all day. It regained consciousness but was obviously injured. Wanting to give it a chance to recover more if possible or let nature take its course and it die overnight I left it again. By now I was feeling guilty should I end its life somehow and if so how would I do that? I was hoping a cat might do the job for me in the night or that it might be dead in the morning, but no it was still alive and a bit more recovered but still damaged on its wing. A cat had been near it and poohed right next to it! At
lunchtime it was dead. A feel responsible and guilty that I couldn't help it and did not have the courage to prevent its suffering or the knowledge of how to do it anyway and I don't think I could kill anything. Is it better to let nature take its course and it to die naturally or was I just shirking a responsibility to a suffering creature or do I need to take that judgmental life/death responsibility anyway?

[Aitrus]

This is a deeply ethical question to me.

If I knew the bird had no chance of healing, or if it healed would be more likely to suffer a lingering death due to starvation or the like, then I would put it out of it's misery. By not putting the creature out of it's misery, we allow it's suffering to continue, and how does that fit with "so long as it harms none...?"

You mentioned something about letting Nature take it's course. We are a part of Nature. The greenhouse you built is a part of Nature because you, a creature of Nature, built it. Just as a grasshopper stuck in an anthill, or a fish caught in a beaver's dam, so too the bird struck something in Nature. It could just as easily struck a tree. It was going the wrong direction at the wrong time. Not your fault at all.

I would ask myself this: if the bird were a guest in my home (a pet), how would I treat it? Would I allow it to suffer, to be crippled without the aid of technology such as we have? Or would I euthanize it and ease it's passing onto it's next journey? Which is the kinder thing to do? I would also bury the body near a tree or in a garden or the like so that it's physical form wouldn't go to waste.

[Explorer]

The most ethical thing to do would ofcourse be to eat it. That saves the lives of another bird, like a chicken. Or if you are vegetarian, the pointless death of some innocent carrots who have no blame in the matter for sure.

I've been thinking about something. Wouldn't it be really ethical and sustainable to scrape all the road kill of the roads, fry it, and sell it in a roadside stall?
Envision the menu!: "You kill it, we grill it", "anything dead on bread", "guess that mess".
I mean, wouldn't that save the lives of just as many innocent animals/vegetables? It would even add some purpose to the slaughter on the highways.

[Lily]

I disagree that the greenhouse is part of nature... they've only been around for a few hundred years.
Birds have a hard time "getting" glass.
It is probable that the collision actually killed it.

I would have to suggest an axe or stretch the neck - not let it suffer.
I can't say I could bring myself to do it - I am terribly soft hearted - but it would be best in my opinion.
Or actually take it to the nearest vet to have it euthanized.

Nico, with wild birds and roadkill you're never sure they don't have some kind of parasite. You'd have to cook it real well and make soup to actually get a good eat out of some of the edible parts for even one person (songbirds are eaten in some places, an abominable practice, and you need several for a single serving)

[skydove]

Thanks for your replies, you have each said something to make me think.
It was a young female blackbird with mottled brown plumage and a bright pair of eyes, not something to make much of a meal out of, much less a pie. Do you know the English nursery rhyme Nico, 'Sing a song of sixpence a pocketful of rye, four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie ?
As she lay injured on two occasions that I saw, a male blackbird came down to visit her.

I've buried her in the garden with a good bucketful of compost over her and wished her a good journey to her next life.

[Corwen]

Once I would have sided with those who advocated putting it 'out of its misery', but I changed my mind a while ago. I was sitting on the loo and I noticed a beetle, obviously in the last hours of its life, and so I sat contemplating what was going on in its mind. For all I knew the beetle was re-experiencing the wonder of its life, triumphs and disasters, grief and joy. Perhaps it was slowly giving up its identity through the processes of death in a kind of rapture. I decided it was arrogant for me to make the decision about whether to end its life, especially since I couldn't tell if it was suffering. Perhaps if I saw a dying animal obviously distressed and in pain I might end its suffering, but even then I might be inclined to let nature take its course, how am I to know what release or joy the creature might experience in its last moments.

It is one thing to help a being who you know intimately, or who has asked for help, but I think it is human arrogance to feel responsible to enact such 'mercy' for those we do not and cannot understand.

Perhaps you might hang some obvious obstacles around your greenhouse so it doesn't happen again, and maybe allowing the bird to return to nature quickly rather than burying it (IMHO this is a human impulse which comes from trying to hide decomposition and 'protect' the body from return to nature).

[Explorer]

For me it is more a matter of scale and circumstance than principle.

I kill mosquitoes and flies, but safe bees and spiders. Why? I don't know.
I eat meat, and somebody said that that means that in total 1 or 2 cows will die just for me. And I hope to one day have the chance to kill and butcher one of them myself. Not for the fun of it, but because of the awareness of the consequences of my choice.

One of the reasons I entered druidry was because of the unnecesary slaughter of lifestock during the plagues. Foot and mouth, pig plague, bird flu.
Piles of burning corpses, foul smelling trucks on the highway on their way to crematoria, the forests off limits, farmers fighting off the police who came to bring the killers. I was disgusted to be a human, not because we kill animals, but because for the economic reasons behind this slaughter.

Another reason was that I had to kill a possum in New Zealand.
Humans introduced the animal in NZ, but it got out of hand, they multiplied and started to eat kiwi eggs. So, they introduced predators to eat the possums, but instead they started to eat the kiwi's. Now they are trying to eradicate all of that again, trying to kill milions and millons of animals by spraying poison over the rainforests and planting traps. They even have a slogan at the national parks, "be a good kiwi, kill a possum". I was disgusted by what they are doing there.

Then I ran into a trapped possum (an animal the size of a small dog), legs broken, full of sh*t and flies, eyes the size of saucers with shock. I felt trapped myself, because I felt the moral obligation to kill it to end its suffering, but I didn't agree with possums being slaughtered.
I took a big rock and was ready to slam its head in. But the possum did something very strange then. It spread all fours wide, fully exposing his body, looking me straight in the eyes, starting to squeek. It realised exactly what I was about to do and seemed to be surrendering in some way, it was certainly trying to tell me something. I've never heard of animals doing that.
This really shocked me and I backed off, and the possum rolled up in a ball again. But I still felt that I had to do it, so I lifted the rock again, and again the same scene, spreading all fours, looking me straigt in the eyes. But this time I hit, as hard as I could. Blood, brains and a very strong musk scent of mortal terror (I think). But damnit, it wasn't dead yet, so I kept hitting until it stopped moving. I was crying from frustration, anger and shame at that point. I was so ashamed to be human that I didn't want to see any humans and retreated into the woods for a few days. I couldn't get the musk smell of me, even when I scrubbed with water and soap. It stayed on me as a reminder of this shame, and I was glad of it. In that way I somehow honoured that animal.

A few days later I came to a small hiking cabin. There was a large deer hanging from a wooden frame, upside down, throat cut, tongue out of its mouth. When I entered the cabin there was a guy cleaning a rifle. And then something strange happened. He started apologizing to me. And he explained how he had been there for a week already, leaving the cabin before day break to stalk the herd of deer every morning. He spend a week just observing them, filming them (he showed me the film), to decide which animal to shoot. And the last day, he would shoot 1 animal, butcher it at the cabin, and load his backback full of meat to eat from it for the entire year. This man was going out of his way to prove to me that he had acted with honour. And he succeeded, and with that he washed away some of the shame of what had happened with the possum. I wasn't shocked by his story at all, nor by the sight of the dead deer, who was treated with this honour. And I gladly accepted a piece of that superb fresh deer steak that he cut from the animal there and then. And it was the best meat I ever tasted.

Long story, but I told it in this detailed blood and gore intensity to show two sides of the same medal. These experiences are closely linked, both strenghten each other in their contrast. Mystically speaking they are the two pillars of a gateway. One of the gateways that brought me to druidry. And it shows how for me it really depends on the circumstances, intentions and context how I feel (strongly) about killing animals. Or humans for that matter.

In the 'damaged bird' case. I would kill it without feeling very dramatic about it. Some sadness perhaps, and I would indeed try to honour it in some small way, but not really a big deal.

[skydove]

Hi Corwen and Nico, Yes part of me agrees that if you see no obvious signs of distress in an animal you should let it die in it's own way and I agree with the arrogance thing, it becomes more heart wrenching when an animal is in pain and suffering and you don't know the best way to give it an easy death or as in Nico's case with the possum when what you try to do turns even more horrific.
It's a strange thing to see how people can justify from on the one hand feeling great sympathy on a heart and feeling level for a fellow creature in pain and do what they can to help, then on a mental level justify an honourable death of an animal for food ( though some dont even give them that - in fact the experiences of a slaughterhouse as a girl turned me vegetarian) . It's like two parts of our personality are able to deal with it differently, I'm not being critical here just fascinated how we as humans tick and which impulse comes out the strongest so that we can function without becoming a gibbering wreck!
It seems to be a body/ hunger thing with moral/ethical overtones The fact that we are animals and need to eat but that we are much more than that, able to feel pain and remorse and offer sympathy and compassion when needed, indeed perhaps after a succulent dinner!
I think what is heartening from both of your responses is that you are both prepared to alter your opinions based on your own experience, and that it is our OWN personal experience when dealing with this issue - whether it be beetle, bird, possum or stag that defines our responses and helps us get to grips with life.

[Explorer]

It's a strange thing to see how people can justify from on the one hand feeling great sympathy on a heart and feeling level for a fellow creature in pain and do what they can to help, then on a mental level justify an honourable death of an animal for food ( though some dont even give them that - in fact the experiences of a slaughterhouse as a girl turned me vegetarian) . It's like two parts of our personality are able to deal with it differently, I'm not being critical here just fascinated how we as humans tick and which impulse comes out the strongest so that we can function without becoming a gibbering wreck!
It seems to be a body/ hunger thing with moral/ethical overtones The fact that we are animals and need to eat but that we are much more than that, able to feel pain and remorse and offer sympathy and compassion when needed, indeed perhaps after a succulent dinner!
I think what is heartening from both of your responses is that you are both prepared to alter your opinions based on your own experience, and that it is our OWN personal experience when dealing with this issue - whether it be beetle, bird, possum or stag that defines our responses and helps us get to grips with life.

I'm not sure if I changed my opinion, but I certainly got more aware about these things.

But you are right that I both experience sympathy and compassion for a fellow creature, but also accept the obvious fact that as a lifeform I must take life to exist.
For animals that seems more dramatic than for plants, because we are animals also, but the principle is the same. Every lifeform has to eat other lifeforms to exist . I don't see any ethical problems with that, on the contrary, I see it as a sacred part of life. That is why I didn't have a problem with the hunter and the deer.

I do see ethical problems with treating life as a product, or as something that we can grant existence or exterminate when we see fit. Because I see life itself as sacred. And that arrogant attitude will some day do us in. That is why I had such a problem with killing the possum, because his death was symbolic of that arrogance, and I was made part of that.

On a personal creature to creature level I also felt compassion for its suffering, and a sad surprise by its response to me, but no remorse that I killed it. On that personal level I did the right thing at that moment. Just like I would feel no remorse if I would have killed that deer for food. This has to do with honour, which is more than just a word for me.
The sense of shame was not because I killed it, but because I became part of a senseless human destruction machine. For me his death was senseless. If I would have killed it for food, then I would have felt very different. Then his death would have been part of the sacred dynamic of sustaining life, my life.

I didn't really realise this in so much detail at that time. I was just very upset and very angry when I killed the possum, and a bit surprised that the dead deer didn't upset me more. But I gave it a lot of thought the following weeks and realised that this is how I feel about these things. And a few months later I joined OBOD.