The other day, some guy on social media who's trying to market himself as an expert on 'cultural research' tweeted: 'People forget how truly new the very delicate pet thing is and how little greatest generation and older cared about pets.'

People 'forget' this, friend, because it isn't true. Humans have always loved their pets. The original poster was quote-tweet ratioed in short order. Among the complainants were many, many historians of antiquity. They brought receipts, such as this titbit from the Surprised Eel Historian (an excellent account):

Roman politician Lucius Crassus kept a pet eel that he decorated w/ earrings (fin-rings?). He loved it so much that when it died he arranged for a funeral, and wept bitter tears at its passing.

Others pointed to ancient inscriptions:

This is the tomb of the dog, Stephanos, who perished, Whom Rhodope shed tears for and buried like a human. I am the dog Stephanos, and Rhodope set up a tomb for me.

Such were common in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Enough said. People have always had feelings about their pets.

What probably set off the curmudgeon, who is obviously sort of a hit-and-run armchair philosopher, was that he remembered his grandparents being less sentimental about animals than he feels that his neighbours are. Commenters on social media are pretty willing to bet that his grandparents lived on a farm. There is a different sensibility at work on a farm, this is true: it doesn't stop people from loving animals. They just accept certain realities about where our food comes from. They also understand economic necessity.

I had similar thoughts the other day when Mrs Hoggett reported in from hunting season. The good farmer wasn't up to getting out and shooting any bambis this year due to recent surgeries. And the resident mechanical engineer took a shot, but 'missed'.

'He hates to shoot them,' said his mom. We understand. Although I am aware that this state has 1.5 million of the marauding ungulates stomping around and we need to cull the herd. Why am I not out there? I can't shoot for toffee. The way I see, I'd be likely to plug the statue of justice (which wouldn't be the first time that had happened). I leave the shooting to the marksmen in the family.

In a pinch, the mechanical engineer is a dead shot. The photo at the top of this page came in an email informing me that he had 'shot this possum and another like it back of the barn.' They get in the feed, you see. Can't have that. They spread diseases, too.

Hoggetts always have a flock of egg-laying chickens. The chickens live a happy, full life with much freedom of movement within their enclosures until, inevitably, they become food themselves. The important thing is that they are, until then, much, much happier than the hens who provided your breakfast egg, unless you happen to get yours from an animal-loving farmer, as does the local congregation (for free, no less).

The time when the fisher got loose in the hen enclosure was an unmitigated tragedy – for the hens, who all died prematurely in the savage attack, for the egg-deprived neighbours and friends, and for the Hoggetts, who had to invest in fisher-proof all-over fencing. Such are the vicissitudes of farming, even on a small scale.

Now consider that this sort of activity has been going on, in a variety of climates and under all sorts of economic arrangements, for about 12,000 years. Let us consider for a second the arrogance of that armchair 'expert' with his drive-by philosophizing. Let us pause to survey mentally the massive record of human knowledge about human/animal interaction in all that time. Let us think in passing of the diversity of cultural matrices, languages, and systems of thought represented by those interactions.

And then, children, let us laugh heartily and move on. Life is too short to listen to all the geezers sitting around the courthouse. Let them entertain each other.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

16.12.24 Front Page

Back Issue Page