Finneran: The Gorilla, The Lion, And Human Suffering

Friday, June 10, 2016

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Do you remember Cecil the lion? Cecil was the old lion shot by a big game hunter and dentist who then became the subject of so many death threats that he had to go into hiding. Apparently for some of the moralists in our midst the killing of an animal now justifies the compensatory killing of a human being. Such recent events suggest that Americans have suffered a nervous breakdown. Their minds are suffused with a strange combination of animal sympathy and human hatred.

Consider the angst and anger about the shooting of Harambe, the legendary and now widely mourned gorilla from the Cincinnati zoo. Consider too the anger and hostility shown to a curious little boy and his momentarily distracted mother.

A young mother turns her head for a moment and her four year old boy does what four year ol boys have been doing since Adam and Eve held hands in the Garden. The little boy wanders away and finds himself in trouble. And for this momentary negligence the public screams for prosecution and jail time for the “criminal” adults. Apparently the natural supply of human sympathy is to be doled out only to animals but not to people.

Of course our love for animals is a long-distance antiseptic love for even in our current derangements we know that animals are wild---often big, strong, fast, unpredictable, and dangerous. Thus we contain them, sometimes humanely and sometimes not, and we film them (blessed are the nature photographers) for our viewing pleasure can only be gained vicariously. Trust me when I say that you don’t want to be too close to those cuddly and adorable polar bear cubs because Mother polar bear is not so cuddly and adorable. She’s usually angry, usually nearby, and she has very sharp teeth. She does not purr.

Which brings me to my three friends---two women, one man---all very human, very nice, and very accomplished young people with family and professional responsibilities. All three have been laid low for months and years at a time, disrupting their lives and creating a certain despair in their minds and in their families. The disease is Lyme. The culprit is Bambi. And because Bambi breeds, more and more Bambis bring more and more ticks bearing more and more Lyme. The human suffering is horrid and it is escalating in its spread across our communities.

One friend, young, healthy, and strong was incapacitated for three or four months, followed by a very slow multi-month recovery. My two other friends have not yet recovered, still suffering horribly after more than six years of doctors, hospitalizations, and daily medications. The disease exacts a terrible human toll.

Yet watch the outcry which follows any suggestion to cull the herds of deer haunting our state. Wildlife biologists will tell you that the herds, with no natural predators anymore, have simply overrun many communities and that the deer themselves suffer from overcrowding.

Now I doubt that anyone wants to re-introduce wolves and mountain lions here in densely populated Massachusetts as a way of controlling the herd. We might all be animal-lovers of a sort but we are not all insane. Wolves in Yellowstone and the Northern forests are fine with me, but not in Needham. Mountain lions too. They’re fine in those Western states with huge tracts of land and virtually no human habitation. They’re not so good to have lurking about in the flora and fauna of Worcester.

Thus my win-win-win suggestion. Cull the herd. (While we’re at it let’s have a wholesale slaughter of the Canada geese plaguing so many communities. They are a filthy obnoxious fowl.)

Now to cull means to kill and that might make you squeamish. You’ll just have to get over it, which is probably best accomplished by considering the sources of your pulled pork and bacon-burger sandwiches...........................

Here’s the win-win-win part---1) kill lots of deer, reducing the herds and reducing the carriers of Lyme-bearing ticks, thereby reducing human disease and misery; 2) freeze the venison steaks and feed the poor, the hungry, and the homeless; and 3) restore a healthy and balanced herd by way of periodic culls.

We need not let the ease and safety of our modern lives blind us. I neither admire nor respect the highly protected dentist who shot Cecil. But I don’t think that he should be shot in moral anger and revenge. An animal killing does not justify a human killing. And we might mourn the sad fate of Harambe without the hysterical shaming and criminalization of a young mother. While we’re at it let us also mourn the tragic toll of Lyme. There is a limit to Bambi’s cuteness.

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.

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Finneran: The Gorilla, The Lion, And Human Suffering

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