Natural law October 18, 2023
I saw the pigeon after I had put out stale bread for the
birds to feed on. He looked healthy, although he clearly had troubles since
when the other pigeons flew off when I came into the yard, she did not.
She was either injured or young, but she could not fly,
walking around on the concrete in search of food while the others later
congregated under the feeder where small birds dumped seed on the ground where
they could feed.
I spread some seed near the crippled bird only to have the
flock of healthier birds swarm down on it, stealing whatever seed it could
reach.
Worse still, the two young cats that come and go from our
yard took notice of the pigeon and began to stalk it.
I had seen these cats hunting smaller birds a few days
earlier, managing to catch one, which they tortured (played with) for some time
before mercifully murdering it.
I did not want them to do this to an even more helpless bird.
I shooed the cats away. Eventually, I took up the bird, put it inside a cat
carrier with some food where the cats could not reach it, checking in on it
from time to time over the course of the day, finding it deceased by dark, too
late to bury the poor thing.
I put her in a plastic bag and kept the bag inside the
carrier with plans to bury it – as I’d done for squirrels, deceased kittens and
other birds in the past.
During the night, some creatures – a raccoon, cat or other –
had tried to break in to get at the body, managing only to snare the bag and
drag the carrier around so it was in a different location when I woke this
morning.
Under the watchful gaze of the two cats, I buried the pigeon
under the feeder, deep enough to keep the cats from digging it up. I also
spread seed over the spot so that the other pigeons in feeding helped pat down
the site to make it even more inaccessible.
This idea of morality only made more evident, as is the
natural cruelty of our world, in which the helpless become victim to the tendencies
of the strong. This point is particularly relevant in days following the middle
east crisis, where deluded college kids protest Israel’s need to defend itself,
painting the terrorists as helpless victims who are striking back – when the
situation is much more complicated than their college professors led them to
believe, as is the case with most things they’ve been taught by questionable
educators – about slavery, about native American conflicts, about the
environment and even capitalism.
We live in a world where the strong prevail, and those who
are not strong need to find allies that will make them seem strong.
This idea that we can protect the vulnerable in any other
way is silly and unrealistic, an illusion about what life is about.
They say intelligence is a survival tool. People use it right
up until they believe they are safe, and then they get stupid again.
Nothing was going to protect the poor pigeon from its predators,
a fact that would have become even more evident had the poor bird survived.
People don’t adopt even healthy pigeons (unless they are part of a trained flock)
and so we would have had to find another place to bring the pigeon, away from
the cats, knowing that wherever we brought it, some other predator would have
made a meal of it, if not also a game.
Survival is not something they teach in college. In fact,
the opposite seems true. We are teaching our kids to think acting as victims
will force society to protect them, rather than teaching them there is no protection
against natural law, other than being strong.
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