Apex Predators – Sunset Observer #4…by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld
June 11, 2013 Whitney Farmer 10 Comments
Yesterday, Santa Monica College became a war zone when a gunman killed a bunch of people because he could and to make himself feel better. When first arriving on the campus after a carjacking, he shot a homeless bag lady in the face.
Two days earlier as our weekly family tea party began, news sources were announcing that a 1300 lb. female Mako shark had been brought into the marina a mile down the street. She had been killed by sport fisherman out of Texas, and she was suspected of being the largest of her kind ever documented.
The women at the table drank Earl Grey with our coconut cake and regretted that she had lost the battle. Texas should have better representation. Our mom’s stories of her childhood there always contained accounts of courage but never brutality. JFK would visit Dallas many years later…
The successful angler said that it had been a life and death battle, and that he almost had gotten pulled in and taken down to the bottom of the sea.
Pity it ended like it did.
Aristotle wrote that Nature abhors a vacuum. More accurately, a vacuum isn’t tolerated. The Mako has been hooked and dragged from where she should swim just like the Assyrians had captured Manasseh generations ago. Now in her place something more insidious but less marvelous like Humboldt squid will begin to hunt. Their numbers have been exploding and their territory increasing because of fewer sharks, orcas, and others that have no natural threats besides humans. A couple of years ago, hundreds of these Diablos Rojas – Red Devils – washed up on the beach here. First viscous from starvation, they attacked some people before finally weakening enough to die in plain sight.
It’s not clear yet why the slayer in Santa Monica acted as he did. But something must have been out of balance in the waters that he swam.
And when there is nothing that gives us guidance, understanding, peace, and vision, eventually the devils come into the void and start to hunt.
NEXT TIME: Payback…
Image of the marvelous Mako being dragged by a pickup, courtesy of theweatherchannel.com.
George Haberberger
June 11, 2013 - 7:53 am
I don’t understand the pride some people take in hunting, or in the case you cited, fishing, in which killing a wild animal for sport is some kind of admirable accomplishment.
I do not hunt. I grew up on a farm and participated in butchering hogs for family consumption. It was almost enough to make me a vegetarian. But those animals were bred to that end. Wild animals have not been. Killing them with the excuse that the meat will be eaten is a bit disingenuous. Farmers and ranchers already have that job and it is NOT a recreational activity.
I live on 40 acres of wooded land about 20 miles from St. Louis. There are deer and turkey as well as many animals that are considered varmints, (opossums, raccoons, squirrels rabbits etc.) They have the 40 acres. I do not allow hunting on my property. Once in a while a raccoon or opossum comes up to the house to eat the bird seed on the ground. As long an they don’t try to get in the house, I’m fine with it.
Bragging that you defeated wild animal with your high-powered, telescoped-sight hunting rifle seems absurd.
Whitney
June 11, 2013 - 9:50 am
Jorge ( as they say in L.A…) –
When my mom was a kid in Texas, they raised livestock for the same reason as you. Their pet pigs were named Salami and Bologna. But there was kind stewarding throughout. The family’s challenge was steeling themselves to not make them all pets.
Papa, my grandpa, once made a chicken wooden legs with popsicle sticks after it stepped on a live electrical wire. Grammie talked about the click-click sound it would make as it would walk across the kitchen floor, because – after the accident – it of course was brought into the house to live…
Your place sounds like heaven.
Your last line reminds me of hell. The observation holds true in any pleasure killing, be it hunting or terrorism.
Moriarty
June 11, 2013 - 7:37 pm
Life and death? Really? If things got too hairy the fisherman could always just let go of the pole. The shark on the other had had little chance of getting that barbed hook out of her mouth.
From last time; what’s a Stunt Wife?
Mike Gold
June 12, 2013 - 1:50 pm
I’m with George — I don’t see a difference between hunting and fishing. However, I’m not opposed to either if done responsibly. I’ve known many hunters (present and former) and none of these people act irresponsibly, to the best of my knowledge.
Since I eat beef as though the Vegans might win someday, it would be hypocritical for me to be opposed to hunting. But, as Edgar Rice Burroughs stated, you eat what you kill and you don’t kill just for show.
In an optimum world, we would actualize the “nothing left but the squeal” philosophy of the 19th Century meat packing industry. Everything possible is used for beneficial consumption. Meat, insulin, organ replacements, clothing, buttons… you use what you kill. And after you’re done and you’ve got something interesting left to put on a pole and dance around naked by the bonfire, well, if the barbecue is good, invite me.
Rene
June 13, 2013 - 9:22 am
What can I say, except that I am as hypocritical as the next guy?
I eat meat a lot and seldom give it much thought.
I also hate cruelty to animals. Hunting for sport is something I feel is abhorrent.
Whitney
June 13, 2013 - 9:40 am
Golden Boy –
THANK YOU for quoting Tarzan’s Daddy. I used to live in Tarzana, and I loved going to the post office because they had a display case of the Burroughs’ family memorabilia. Items included the cancelled check from selling his first Tarzan book.
Whitney
June 13, 2013 - 9:44 am
Rene –
I DO NOT support pleasure killing whether on land/sea/sky. However I eat meat, too. But I also harbor a hope to have my body fed to sharks after I die. I love the idea of not going to waste.
So, if I eat flesh but don’t mind being treated a flesh, I think that evens out the scale.
Lastly, I wouldn’t mind having Daniel Day Lewis speak a Thank You over me like he did for the deer in the beginning of “Last of the Mohicans”…
Whitney
June 13, 2013 - 9:45 am
Moriarty –
Drop the bone and back away…
Rene
June 13, 2013 - 4:54 pm
Whitney –
I don’t know about that. I’m sort of a Spiritualist. More accurately, I’m a Brazilian Spiritist (though I have a strong current of agnosticism, I struggle between faith and doubt).
In the event that I die in a traumatic way or if I’m not as purified in life as I think I am, then that could mean that my spirit spends time “attached” to my remains.
I’d hate to feel like I’m shark’s poo for a few years. It’s all I’m saying.
Moriarty
June 13, 2013 - 8:18 pm
Whitney,
Cheerfully.