Anne Irving

Thank you for the article. I did not expect it to change my mind from leaning heavily on the hunter for 100% of the blame for Takaya's death. You are correct, we should examine our culture. Takaya's seems almost an accidental death. It does indeed require a concerted effort to live with wolves, predators and other large mammals. It seems terribly important in this moment to examine the violence with which we view all the other animal species born to our time. From wolves and cougars, to elephants and fish. We create trophy hunters. We made this person when we told our child: take care of this world, and without care we placed a dead animal on their plate. She saw how we built awkward justifications for why it is okay to only speak about care for the world but to continue to live with violence in our kitchen. We put a corpse on her plate and we told her: its okay to treat animals as food. We do not like the flavour of plant proteins as much, or we've always done it this way. My mother told me: we can't digest plants. I told my son: you've been hanging around with vegetarians, some people eat meat, others don't. These are awkward illogical gymnastics we deploy in order to build a structure that will allow us continue to feast on corpses of animals. Our children saw how dishonest we were when we said: take care. We have become like the villains we grew up with: "Hansel, stretch out your finger that I may see if it is fat enough to eat" or the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk who threatens: "I'll grind your bones to make my bread". We live violently, three times a day. Takaya touched our hearts because we felt he saw us, and held us to a standard of care. We must see ourselves with honesty.