We Killed a Rabbit in the Woods
It seemed like the right thing to do—but how can I be sure?
I parked my car and hopped the ferry over to Kingston to see my buddy Mike. He was waiting for me in his pickup and we drove off to a forest just south of Port Gamble for a walk in the woods. It’s been unusually hot here in the Puget Sound—mid-90s where I live, mid-80s closer to the water—but our early start and the shade meant it wasn’t too bad.
We were about a mile in when we came to a broad, open crossroads in the trail, and the bright sunshine drew my eye to something wriggling in the dirt. It was a tiny rabbit ... the kind you can’t help but call a “bunny rabbit” if you’ve ever had a young daughter whose heart swooned when she saw one. Its hindquarters had been crushed into the dirt, and it could only wriggle its upper body. I pointed it out to Mike.
“Oh boy,” he said. Just then, a lady came walking toward us down the trail.
As she came closer, she saw the half crushed rabbit. “You know,” she said, “there’s an animal shelter down in Poulsbo. If you had a box you could take it down there.”
“We don’t have a box,” I said. She was already walking away.
Mike and I looked at each other, then at the woman walking. When she turned a corner into the woods, Mike asked: “Do you want to do it or shall I?”
I flashed back to the time when I was 17, driving home in the dark near my house in Romeo, Michigan. A rabbit had dashed out in front of my car; I swerved to avoid hitting it. No luck. I heard a muffled thump, thump as I rolled over his body. I stopped, then backed up (avoiding another thump by steering around the body in the soft red glow of the backup lamps). The bunny writhed in pain, his rear hindquarters pancaked into the dirt road. I took a long pause, considering what to do, and then I did the only thing that seemed right. I backed up slightly, then ran the car forward, over his head and upper body. Then I backed up and checked. I had put him out of his misery.
I looked at Mike. “Do you mind?”
Mike whispered under his breath “Sorry buddy” and ended it with a stomp. I watched him closely—I didn’t want to look away. And then we both set off down the trail.
We talked for a few minutes about animals, and I mentioned an advice column I had just read about choices like this. We moved on to suffering, and ethics, and the nature of consciousness—then soon enough to where consciousness resides and transhumanism and quantum mechanics. We didn’t talk about the bunny again.
What would you have done?
I never really considered this a right or wrong type of thing. There are just different perceptions of what it means to be humane. My perception aligns with yours, and I would have done the same, but the woman wanted to take it to the animal shelter where it most certainly would have been euthanized, but would have to suffer for another 2 to 3 hours to get there.
Is it easy to "KIll" a animal, let's put it another way, the smaller the animal. The easiest it is. We don't think twice about squashing a cockroach, spider, beetle. Part of that reason is, we can't hear them scream and we believe that it is over so quick. They won't feel a thing. The bigger the animal gets the harder, I would imagine, it would be to take a life... In the circumstance you were in... Your buddy did the right thing.,