Snapping Necks

On bringing myself to kill injured animals

I grew up with pet ferrets. And while the most we had at any given time was four, it felt like a lot more (I have many memories of reaching for my favorite only to find that the midsection I had grabbed onto did not correspond with the ferret I was after). They were “free-range” but could reliably be found curled up together in the bottom of the linen closet atop a pile of their pelf: the rubber bath plug, water bottles, and even my training bras.

The problem with small pets is that they are not known for their longevity. Rats typically only live to about three in captivity, and for hamsters it’s even less (I had a former roommate who, upon taking his one-and-a-half-year-old hamster to the vet, returned with a note on “geriatric” hamster protocol).

While ferrets live about eight years on average, my siblings and I never got to experience their natural expiration. A few of our ferrets would escape in the summer months when the front door was left ajar and meet a bad end via the neighbors’ dog. More often, they would take that fateful one-way journey to the vet. On one occasion, however, my dad dispatched one of the sick ones in the backyard, an especially miserable afternoon for us all.

While my dad “grew up on a farm” (and all that entails), I did not. I grew up making petal habitats for my guinea pig in our front lawn, and bawling whenever a bird struck our windows, or when we drove past roadkill on the way to visit my grandparents.

And while this sensitivity toward animals wasn’t reflected in my diet until early adulthood, I no longer consume any animal products. The prospect of animal suffering is simply too harrowing.

This is why I am devastated that I cannot kill sick or injured animals.

Yesterday, I noticed a mouse that was struggling to cross the sidewalk. As I stooped to examine it, I could see its heart beat fluttering inside its wafer-thin skin, and I could tell its front paws were mangled. I gently scooped up the animal and relocated it onto an embankment, reasoning that I didn’t want it to get crushed. But as I stood back and looked at it, I wondered if maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t, if I had stepped on it, or even smashed it with a rock. This animal was not making a comeback, and from what I could gather, it was distressed.

Whenever I encounter animals like this, I am overcome. My body suddenly feels heavy, my vision blurry. I feel like Nietzsche when, upon witnessing the beating of a horse in the streets of Turin, the philosopher was said to have gone mad. While this story is likely apocryphal, there is nothing implausible about it — to encounter an animal in pain, that likely does not know why or for how long it will be in pain, is one of the most base displays of helplessness.

But even if I could alleviate their suffering via euthanasia, I simply cannot bring myself to do it. And it’s not for some principled reason of never wanting to kill an animal, not some “line I draw,” or some belief about the natural course of things. I don’t know what it is. It is simply that it is not always obvious where to end things. This mouse. This essay.