His Fine Feathered Friends, And Ours

For as long as I can remember, I've felt a sense of kinship and empathy toward animals. By our measure of intelligence, they may come up short. But animals have their own wonderful endowments. They are different from us, but in a good way. They deserve not only our appreciation, but also our respect.

Follow your favorite NEWSWEEK columnists

Customize the Newsweek homepage to feature the latest word from your favorite columnists.

As a boy, I read about animals and drew pictures of them. I could never get enough of watching animals, particularly the wild ones in the woods behind my Aunt Harriet's house in Connecticut. The family dogs were, well, family. My girl Brandy—half Labrador, half golden retriever—would chase a tennis ball until my arm gave out, or until dinner was called.

I didn't need anyone to tell me that harming animals was wrong. Even more than a natural feeling of fellowship with animals, I felt a visceral disgust for cruelty. By my second year at Yale, in 1985, I was reading a good bit about the plight of animals. Then, on Labor Day weekend, matters came together during a trip to Pennsylvania. What I had been feeling, and thinking, suddenly found focus in one awful firsthand sight.

To raise money for the local fire department in Schuylkill County, thousands of people gathered for a slaughter. It had been a tradition for years—a big family event complete with beer and hot-dog vendors. They called it a pigeon shoot, though that hardly begins to describe the spectacle. To a cheering, laughing crowd, gunners took their places. There were dozens of crates, and ropes were used to pull off the lids one at a time. As each lid was removed, two or three pigeons would flutter upward, and then just as quickly fall from the sky in a burst of gunfire. Children, called "trapper boys," would scramble out and stomp on the wounded birds, or twist their heads off—with more cheering from their proud parents and the other spectators.

My first thought was that there must be a better way to raise money for the fire department. My second thought was that the cause of animals was very much about people. Here was a gathering centered on gratuitous cruelty, and the crowd couldn't get enough. The adults were appalling enough. But to see these kids conscripted in the crushing and killing was beyond belief. I was watching not just a massacre, but also a kind of indoctrination. Doubtless some of the children felt a fondness for animals similar to what I'd felt as a boy, and apparently the point of this ritual was to root out their sense of compassion, so that they could grow up to be as hard-hearted as their parents.

From that moment, it was no longer enough for me to love animals or read about their plight. They needed help. They couldn't fend for themselves. Humanity held all the power in the relationship. I returned to campus and started an animal- advocacy group. When I graduated, I devoted myself to the task full time.