Feral Smiles

In the past week or so I've been in situations where a few different people I know have offered me a feral smile. It's a smile that says "I've got you".  Not in a fun, playful sort of way, but with a sense of power-over. I didn't like it. When I could, I spoke out - when I couldn't, I left the situation. No reason to stay. I'm learning to take better care of myself.

I remember reading some time ago about an animal, I think it was a stoat or a polecat, that kills - not for food - but for (what seems to be) enjoyment.  The smile I experienced with these people was the kind of smile that I imaged seeing on the face of a predator after catching its prey - but before killing it. Imagine their chagrin when I slipped out from under their nasty paws and strolled away.

This afternoon, I walked the sidetrails west of Tech and thought about animals that kill for enjoyment and not simply for nourishment. And how we judge them.

Just an aside (as if this whole post isn't one long series of asides ....) earlier today I taught a class for one of our professors who was otherwise engaged. The class conversation moved to a discussion about hi-tech surgery: robot who do the actual cutting, etc. while directed by a human surgeon. We were all viscerally opposed to it because, we said, computers and robots can make mistakes. I mentioned that we were "prejudiced" against the robots. The students were shocked to hear the word in the context of something non-human.

And so, with that experience fresh in my mind and ruminating (in a non-predatorial way) on the feral smile, I thought about stoats and polecats and killing. Killing for fun. And our distinctly puritan prejudice against that kind of waste of (our) resources.

We prefer our predators to be mannerly. Like an owl, wise. They're hungy, or they need to feed the owlets, so they swoop down on a little critter, kill it, and eat it. Very utilitarian.

But when a predator oversteps its bounds (according to our standards of polite predator behavior) we take action. Recently a rancher lost 120 sheep in one night to a pack of wolves. The sheep were slaughtered and left out on the range. It must have been a nightmarish experience to look over the landscape turned into wasteland and see that much death and destruction. For no apparent reason! The wolf pack was destroyed.

Unfortunately, I can compare that scene easily to other images I've seen as I research the history of white men and wolves in the American west. I can imagine the native peoples (and perhaps the wolves) with a similar sense of shock and despair when looking out over the landscape and seeing the buffalo slaughters - or the wolf and coyote slaughters - piles of animals that you could climb up like a small hillock. A waste.

Killing for fun. Killing for the pleasure of the stalk, the hunt, the kill. This is primarily a human occupation. I understand the pleasure of the stalk ... the hunt ... even the kill. But, I also buy into the utilitarian mindset. I am prejudiced against trophy hunters, against killing wolves, bears, mountain lions, eagles, and other competitor predators. I believe it should be a useful activity as well - bringing home meat for the family table ... ridding the village of a predator that gets out of hand ... or even our practice of catch and release for fish.

I like to believe that this kind of behavior is somehow fear based - I like to believe it as a kind of mercy and openness to understand the behavior of "the other". But, I know that there is a kink, a twist, something out-of-place in some people and they enjoy, not just the stalk and the hunt, but the kill. Kill comes from the German "qualen" and means: torment.

I could see the little flame of enjoyment in the eyes of my feral smilers as they anticipated some show of torment - in myself, and in the others who were part of these experiences. It was distasteful, to say the least.