Driving home on the dark highway, a car crossed me on the other lane, headlights making it momentary difficult to see. he jumped right between our cars. I had a tenth of a second to react and then he was dead. A tenth of a second that happened in slow motion. He rolled on my hood, breaking his body, pushed forward until my car stood still after seemingly 10 whole minutes.
The other car stopped to help me. One of them a hunter, one of them who had it happen before. They helped me to ring the right people and parked their car in front of mine, car flashlights blinking on the dark road. Thank god, because my head was blank.
The police made a case number and send a hunter, in service of the municipality, to the scene. The insurance called the car hauler to bring my car to our car mechanic. The front maybe damaged beyond repair.
So we waited, under an incredible bright starry sky, in the middle of the dark forest, next to my dead deer. One of his legs almost broken in 2, his head limp, his blood on the road that crosses his forest.
He was still a calf, born this may. And I robbed it from a lifetime. His family probably closely, watching between the trees in the dark.
Still, there was no sadness while he was dragged to the side of the road. Everyone kept asking how I was doing, nobody shedding a tear for the life that was taken. Disregarded, seen as less important than we, humans, claiming this planet. I should have said something, putting my hand on its head. But i didn’t, I couldn’t, as if my head had forgotten everything it contained. The hunter trying to comfort me by saying he has been called out 3 nights this week alone.
Waking this morning from a sleepless night, the first thing I see on the online books, is a picture from one of my neighbours. A picture of a magnificent deer. Shot dead on the ground. Underneath are at least 10 comments, congratulating, emoji’s licking their lips in anticipation of a good meal. There are too many deer, they say. It’s important that we keep their population under control, they say.
I cry for our planet and its people. I cry for the justifications that we make.
Have not eaten meat for over 10 years and now I kill an innocent young deer. Just by being part of human society makes me have an impact on this home of ours.
We think we are so great, so important, so strong. Killing and claiming the land with disregard of all its life. Without ceremony, without giving thanks, without giving back. Tilting the scale further and further down. Killing our own feeding ground, forgetting that we are part of it all.
We breed animals for slaughter. Millions and millions of them that never even know a natural life. Maybe we should buy our meat in the slaughterhouse, where we can see their dead eyes. We mourn our pets, but not the ones we eat.
But still, I don’t think that breaking with society and moving to a cave in the mountains,
where I would have almost no impact on the planet,
is the solution to my soul’s anguish.
I accept that I’m a part of the pain of our planet.
I hope I can be a part in finding our place back in nature too.
