“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals… In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
Henry Beston
I believe parts of the following video are an excerpt from the movie Eight Below. No doubt, these are trained dogs acting out a scene, and I would have thought it suspiciously contrived had I not seen the way my neighbor’s cows acted when one of their own lay dead in the middle of my field last summer. They all gathered near her and the bull continually tried to get her up. He moved all around her, nudging her again and again and he was clearly in distress. Some of the other cows also tried to move her with their noses. Others mooed. She had obviously been dead for quite awhile, but they did not leave her. When the neighbor came to cart her away to a big pit on his property, they all silently followed single file as if in a funeral procession. They watched her being placed in the pit, stayed around for a little while and then all gradually left. Another cow adopted her young calf and gave her milk.
How many stories have we heard about elephants caring for one another and of how they demonstrate obvious mourning behaviors when they lose one of their own, sometimes for years; about dogs travelling miles and miles to get help for their injured owners, of whales and dolphins helping drowning people. We really know so very little of what is going on in the minds and spirits of all the animal life around us. Many seem to have a sensitivity and social consciousness and devoted sense of loyalty to one another that may inspire some of us to stop and consider our own.
This video is almost 13 min. long. You may not want to watch all of it, but you might want to take a couple of minutes to recognize the message herein. It is titled “A Christmas Story” but can be told any time of year. If you like dogs, you will love this video. If you are indifferent or don’t like them perhaps by the end you will. Enjoy:
“Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”
Albert Einstein
