print“While Western man works to rid himself of the most basic ethical instincts, like defending his kinfolk, animals remain true to their nature. Wild beasts intuit that their teeth and talons are meant for tearing flesh–any flesh, the easier the better. It makes perfect animal sense to attack a thing that is docile, slow, and passive, like the not-so sapient Homo sapiens…
The handful of honest experts left admits that attacks are up because politically correct policies have bred fearless critters. The Pavlovian response to aversive treatment has been bred out of the wild animal population. Mary Zeiss Stange, author of Woman the Hunter, says that hunting ultimately has less to do with killing than with instilling fear in animals that have placed us on their menu. If animal rights activists possessed a dog’s smarts, they’d understand the perils of such a program, for an unafraid animal is a dangerous animal; an unafraid human an endangered fool…”
Read the rest of my new column, “Animals Gone Wild,” on The American Spectator. Comments are, as always, welcome.
Update: There are some very amusing and poignant letters-to-the-editor on The American Spectator about “Animals Gone Wild.” The section is titled “Wolves and Alligators,” and everyone is pretty pissed off.
I like R. Trotter’s missive: “A big paws up to Ilana Mercer’s fine article. Watch just about any nature documentary and much of it is dedicated to telling us simpletons that though many of us are afraid of snakes, sharks, bears, etc., in reality humans pose a greater threat to the critters than they do to us. While that is, at best, arguable, and only so on a statistical and species-by-species basis, it is based upon the flawed premise that the life of a human and, say, a black widow spider, are equivalent…”
Sam Karnick has an interesting comment at Karnick On Culture. Here’s my reply.
Updated Again: Animals Gone Wild has really struck a chord. Writing for the British Spiked Online, Josie Appleton has referenced my essay. As I told her, it’s refreshing to meet a writer who is both professional and ethical as to reference a quote. I do it, but most here don’t:
Hi,
A friend sent your piece on wild animals to me as I was just about to publish a piece on the same subject (hooked off the wild boar rampage in Germany), so I included a couple of your examples. Thanks for a good article.
‘BEWARE OF THE BOARS: From Bavaria to South Africa, rampaging animals are bringing towns to a standstill. Why don’t we just shoot them?’
All the best
Josie Appleton
Convenor, Manifesto Club ((www.manifestoclub.com)
Surprise,surprise!! Wild animals are actually wild. There are no Bambis or Winnies the Pooh out there in the real woods. The billious simpletons who seem to control public discourse in our society think animals are cuddly little people. They really aren’t. I would never mistreat an animal, wild or domestic. But, in the natural order of things there are predators and prey and those who do combat for self preservation. Humans are supposed to have dominion over the beasts of the fields. If we try to meet them on their level they will outrun, outfight, outrip and tear us every time. Even if a man isn’t a hunter he should be willing to shoot a mountain lion off his front porch to protect his family or even his family dog. Many are not. They would probably soil their shorts if the saw a real gun anyway.
One last thing. Don’t sit there in your leather loafers munching on a hot dog while you criticize me for going squirrel hunting.
Uncle Dallas had a Jersey bull which he raised delicately from a loving little fellow. But, when the hormones popped out on the way to mature bullhood, the loving and nuzzling stopped abruptly. Later, the bull cornered my uncle in the lot, and Dallas knocked one horn off.
Some while later I encountered the animal on washday at the bottom-of-the- hill spring. I made it up the hill and sailed through a five strand barbed wire fence a second before ole one horn got there.
That was sixty years ago, but I found out that animals, tame or wild, are still animals. It was about that time I discovered that if the animal has teeth, it will bite. As the Bible says, “Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment;” ged
Fantastic column, Ilana.
What pathetic nonsense, that “we’re invading their habitat” claim. You’d think animals respect “property rights.”
Leftists will never put it with those words, naturally, because it involves the concept of “property” — i.e. the sin of “non-sharing,” the root of all evil.
The Left’s notion of “sharing” reduces to “your property or your ruined life; either give us what we want, or we’ll have you excommunicated.” Libertarians, for one, think otherwise: they know that you cannot share what you do not own.
Leftists…
– first rejected the Judeo-Christian bourgeoise social order to indulge their primitive and perverse fantasies on which that order put a very high premium since it expected restraint and delay of gratification to fit into civilized life.
– for that, they rejected the modern division-of-labor economy, labeling it as “alienating” since it required settling for being an individual with an expertise in a productive activity;
– then they realized they had to reject all the amenities of civilized life since they are the fruits of that division of labor;
– finally, they had to reject society since there is no human group under the sun that hasn’t striven for division-of-labor-based survival to conquer and control nature.
Now they are at the stage where “deconstructionists” are trying to prove — through the banality of mind-numbing sophistry — that even the word “parasite” for alien micro-organisms in our bodies are “just a ‘social construct.'” (This is for them a very radical form of rejecting “racism.” I kid you not. I have actually been forwarded fragments from such discussions.) Funny thing is I haven’t seen them drinking from the sewage to prove their point.
Here’s the thing that really frosts me about tragedies caused by this type of liberal claptrap: If either parent of the 6-year-old girl killed by the black bear had prevented this horror by carrying and using a weapon capable of stopping such a creature – like a .444 Marlin – they would have been immediately arrested on at least two Federal charges. 1) Carrying a firearm in a National Forest (not permitted without special permission, and type of weapon is often limited to boot); 2) killing a protected or endangered animal. Unless your name is Bill Gates, any mere civilian has a snowball’s chance in hell of defending themselves against the legions of taxpayer-funded Marxist attorneys who busy themselves persecuting anyone who dares to challenge any facet of PC dogma.
There is truly no limit to the sheer folly and suicidal stupidity of liberalism – a disease that afflicts only the west. Like the swarms of colonizing jihadis and Mexican conquistadores, the wild beasts take advantage in the manner of an opportunistic infection – eating away at the diseased body of this civilization, aided and abbetted by the inmates who presently run the assylum.
I remember a libertarian discussion once when the question came up, “Do animals have rights?”
A friend answered, “Of course they have rights. They have the right to live and be happy – until I want to eat them or wear them!”
I was so shocked I decided to join PETA (People for the Edible Treatment of Animals).
And for some reason I am reminded of the chorus to the country classic ‘The Preacher and the Bear’
Oh Lord! You delivered ol’ Daniel from the lion’s den,
And Jonah, from the belly of the whale and then,
The Hebrew children from the fiery furnace, so the Good Book do declare,
Oh Lord, if you can’t help me – for goodness sake don’t help that bear!
Heck, you can’t even trust your allegedly “domesticated” animals, such as cats and dogs, 100%. Most of the time they’re loving and affectionate… but they too can sometimes turn on you. If you own a dog, you have to be its alpha leader. If you have a cat, well, you might have to get out of the way of a swat.
When I briefly lived in a Colorado college town, I was mighty tempted to bag me a Canada goose as they stopped over in the middle of their migration. I’d have loved to give the turkey treatment to a goose. And I’d have kept the down and feathers to make something warm with.
If I lived in one of those places where deer have overrun the suburbs, I’d be mighty tempted to bag a Bambi for the freezer. I’ve never tasted venison, but I hear it’s GOOD. 🙂 [Same here; as a kid, the tales of Robin Hood made me salivate for venison. LOL]
Spot on as usual, Ms. Mercer.
Two years ago a gorilla at the Dallas Zoo escaped from its enclosure and bit three people (including one toddler) before being killed by Dallas PD. According to witnesses, zoo personnel initially made no attempt to contain the gorilla or even to tranquilize it!
Appalling.
Venison is indeed very good, though inclined to be tough. (That’s not bad, anthropolgists will tell you that orthodontia is so often needed these days because our kids don’t chew tough food anymore and their jaws don’t grow big enough to accommodate their teeth.)
But for delicious steaks, roasts and burgers – you have got to try buffalo. Oddly enough, you can get it in many health food stores these days… [and at some supermarkets, but it too is tough]
This essay is a masterpiece; I wish I had written it myself. Living in the Mexican wolf recovery area and writing about wolf reintroduction management and recovery strategies and tragedies has made me all too aware that “The Pavlovian response to aversive treatment has been bred out of the wild animal population.” I did write about it in RANGE this fall but Ilana has done so much better a job than I was able to. Hats off to the author of this great essay. Congratulations, I wish there was some kind of award to nominate her for. [Thanks for your generous praise, and do let The American Spectator, the brave publication that ran the essay, know you approve.]
http://www.mexicanwolf.0catch.com
Please have a look at my blog post:
In this day and age, our fat, happy and secure people have forgotten what our fathers knew: that nature is the enemy, animals aren’t from Disneyland and strangers should be viewed with suspicion until we know better.
I’ll do the philosophical aspect of this later. For now, I’d like everyone to consider what they’d do if their car broke down in bad weather and they had to spend at least one night in it…
At, Rants and Raves http://rantsand.blogspot.com/
And for a great buffalo dish, try ground buffalo/ Anasazi bean chilli in a slow cooker. You can celebrate traditional Native American cooking by chowing down on an endangered species.
Like other posters above, I’ve also heard that game meat can be tough… in that case, you give it the same treatment as any other piece of tough meat… you cook it at a low temperature for a long time. If I ever get my hands on a piece of game meat, I’m betting that my biggest crock pot (slow cooker) will handle it just fine!! (I’m almost salivating as I type this! 😉 [Me too…Like Homer Simpson]
“Animals live in harmony with Nature, obeying its dictates, while man must choose to do so,” this is what environmentalism preaches. Environmentalists advocate submission as the proper relationship between man and Nature. Sound familiar?
Mom being a top-notch hunter, we had a lot of game meat growing up. (One night my sister complained, “Elk burgers again!”)
I don’t remember game meat being tough. In fact, fresh Venison will practically melt in your mouth.
This article on animals gone wild caught my attention. I was faced with wild animals on a daily basis where I used to live in North West Montana. I lived where there are the most grizzly bears in the lower 48. ILana’s article on animals gone wild is exactly correct. The Fish & Game & forest service are totally wrong, & wield way to much power. I have never seen a fish & game officer, or Glacier Park ranger assume the “fetal” position, as they were being charged by a grizzly bear. Yet this is what they tell law abiding citizens to do when they are attacked. Oh, don’t shoot them, they say. Just use pepper spray. I have known pepper spray to work on “some” bears, and known pepper spray to be totally ineffective against drunk humans involved with the Sheriffs dept. Can you count on pepper spray? No you can’t. I have known a husband and wife both attacked by a sow grizzly after it was sprayed (Cracker Lake, Glacier Park). I could go on here with many incidents, too many to put down here without writing a book on it. Citizens faced with marauding wild animals have the right and duty to defend themselves and their families. Not according to fish & game officials, however. If you do the right thing, and defend yourself with a firearm of the proper caliber, the consequences you face are fines, jail time, loss of hunting privileges, or all of the above. A few proper thinking states have instituted the “Castle Doctrine”. This is a law passed to protect homeowners from any liability from killing violent intruders or wounding them. This should be in every state in the USA. Why is it that shooting a wild animal in self defense should be held at a higher value or level than a human being? Where I lived in Montana, wild animal attacks happened very frequently. Not just grizzlies, but with mountain lions as well. You take a normal, logical thinking prudent individual, and he or she will protect themselves and their loved ones. However, the fish & game officials have caused law abiding citizens to “shoot, shovel, and shut up”. Yes, that is right. The Fish & Game act like Gestapo agents holding themselves above the law. Trust me everyone, I have NOT, NEVER, seen or even heard of a Fish & Game officer assume the fetal position. I have seen them shoot charging bears with no consequences. Police officers that shoot human beings are put on administrative leave with pay, until they find out that the shooting is justified. It is totally wrong and absurd to expect people to defend themselves, their family, and their livestock, and then tell Fish & Game officers what happened, knowing you are guilty before proven innocent. A sheep rancher only a couple of miles from the ranch my family & I lived on, had 29 sheep killed in one night by large Timber wolves. They ate only 2 sheep. This, Fish & Game emphatically stated, that wolves only kill what they eat. What they say goes. It appears that our government enjoys this stranglehold it has on law abiding citizens. PETA loves this as well. It is worth noting, that men & women in the united states that purchase hunting licenses, are the ones truly representing the “people for the ethical treatment of animals”.
–Martin Berrow