Tha Flames and The Walls

1890:

As Australia swelters in heat, the Bush is burning. Houses have been lost. Even human lives. It’s on the news. But nary a mention of the main inhabitants of the bush, most of whom couldn’t escape and were burned to death, and no mention of those other animals who couldn’t escape because they were locked in.

In paddocks surrounded by barbed wire and unopenable gates, as the flames and choking smoke spread towards the trapped animals, so the inevitability of a burning-death must become clear to them. During which time these frightened and very sentient animals only know one thing – there’s no escape.

Now, take away the flames, take away the smoke, leave instead the walls of an enclosure and a ramp leading to a truck, leading to a chute or a conveyor, leading to execution. That route, trodden last year by fifty-five billion sentient land animals should be enough to stop the humans in their tracks? “Now listen. Can you hear the voices”?

No. Because it’s all done off stage – what’s to remember? The stats will be forgotten, and the TV pictures too. Yesterday’s news. The main elements will be blanked out. But those flames, those wire fences, those unheard screams, the being trapped. If they make the News at all, it only talks of ‘stock-losses’. But whether they die in flames or have their throats cut at the abattoir, the animals have long been ‘de-life-d’, gentle souls that they are. Perhaps their existence in this life is to go deeper into that all-evasive trait, forgiveness?

But for we humans, in today’s consciousness, swamped with information, almost everyone of us understands what’s going on and also that this whole animal thing is unnecessary.