Voices
I am never more than a thought or
two away from remembering that
I kill for a living.
Over the years, more or less, I
have been able to hold onto my
discomfort, my uncertainty, my
anxiety about raising animals to
be killed. I have maintained, to
some degree, that little boy’s visceral sense of tragedy in the face
of death, at the sight, for example,
of a little robin gasping its last
breaths as blood pulsed out of the
BB gun hole in its throat while
my friend Joe, who had shot it,
watched and spoke about it with
an exaggerated sense of bravura as
the small bird died.
Nevertheless, over the course
of the last year or two, something
fundamental changed, gradually, and almost imperceptibly. A
number of years ago, when Izzy
the Goat died, more or less in my
arms, I bawled hysterically. I felt
her death in the deepest parts of
me. But, then, as the number of
animals increased on the farm,
I loaded more and more of them
onto the livestock trailer for the
trip to the slaughterhouse, and
first one and then another would
occasionally die on the farm, of
old age, of disease, of troubled
birth. I have dragged the bod-
BOB
COMIS
HUFFINGTON
09.15.13
ies of full-grown ewes and 100
lb. pigs into the bucket on the
tractor and buried them in the
compost. I have picked up dead
newborn lambs, limp, and still
slimy and warm, wrapped them
in some hay, and dropped them
in the wheelbarrow to also be
buried in the compost. More
than that, I have used a gun,
though only once, to end the suffering of two lambs that were in
A number of years ago,
when Izzy the Goat died, more
or less in my arms, I bawled
hysterically. I felt her death in
the deepest parts of me.”
the violent throes of what I was
convinced was tetanus, which
would have slowly, painfully, and
viciously killed them over the
course of a few days. The bright
red blood oozing out of the holes
in their heads onto the dark
brown ground is emblazoned on
my mind and the thunder of the
shots still rings in my ears.
All of this death and dying still
confronts me as a challenge. But,
and this is an important but, my
relationship to it has changed. I