So the gander killed the hen and I killed the gander.<\/p>\n
He had been marked for some days.<\/p>\n
He had a mean look and was the loudest to hiss. I couldn’t tell him from the other geese easily.\u00a0 So finally I marked the one I thought most aggressive.\u00a0 And over the next 24 hours it was the one to hiss the most.<\/p>\n
I had nearly brought the hen back after a mean beating.\u00a0 She was nearly dead and could barely move.\u00a0 Its crown was bloodied and its eyes had been brutalised – maybe pecked out.\u00a0 But with some care and protection she was back on to the mend.\u00a0 Dave had advised salted warm water.\u00a0 It worked a charm and she was nearly able to see.\u00a0 So she tried to get water from the stream.\u00a0 And the goose attacked.<\/p>\n
I heard the screams but could not run because I was straddling timbers on the broken roof.\u00a0 When I finally arrived, she was dead floating in the stream.\u00a0 He was squawking above her.<\/p>\n
I gave chase.\u00a0 He tired sooner than I.<\/p>\n
I could not face the killing and switched my mind to crazy, shouted sorry and throttled the goose.\u00a0 It took longer than I expect or was prepared for.\u00a0 At least a minute.\u00a0 I could not look him in the eye.\u00a0 My heart was pounding.\u00a0 I knew it was wrong, but I had to do it.\u00a0 Finally I managed to break the neck.<\/p>\n
I put my coat over him and walked in a daze back to pick the hen from the stream.\u00a0 By now the boys had arrved to find out about my shouting.\u00a0 The hens beak had been pecked off and feathers clogged the stream.\u00a0 We cleaned up and removed the dead bodies.<\/p>\n
There is no atonement for killing.\u00a0 I felt the life of the creature in my hands and I extinguished it.\u00a0 That is unacceptable behaviour.\u00a0 I am a human.\u00a0 I can do better.\u00a0 It is my responsibility to find a better way.\u00a0 I took a short cut.\u00a0 the garden will be quieter and safer for teh other birds.\u00a0 But that could have been achieved without the second murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So the gander killed the hen and I killed the gander. He had been marked for some days. He had a mean look and was the loudest to hiss. I couldn’t tell him from the other geese easily.\u00a0 So finally I marked the one I thought most aggressive.\u00a0 And over the next 24 hours it …
Continue reading There is no atonement for killing.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-perspective"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-mH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1407"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}