We are stardust, we are golden

we are billion year old carbon

and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden

- Jonie Mitchell, “Woodstock”

Ferrets are more determined than they are bright. Case in point being my own pet ferret, Rosie. Rosie explores nooks and crannies with the unrestrained zeal of a fanatic. Wikipedia tells me that ferrets have been domesticated (they are the domesticated version of the polecat) since perhaps the time of Socrates and Buddha, and all that breeding – for going down holes, for ferreting out pest rodents – has resulted in a lovable freak of nature that behaves nearly suicidally in its compulsion to know, KNOW!, what’s down that hole, or in that crevice! Even if that hole leads to a drop off of ten or more feet (that’s like a twenty story building to a ferret), and a fatal fall, the only thing that will stop a ferret is the loving, exasperated hand of its owner. We can’t understand ferrets in this regard; it’s something they “just gotta”.

Or perhaps we can understand them, and all too well at that. My thoughts are now linked with those of so many others as we contemplate the unspeakable tragedy that is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. As the oil spews out from a mile below, it is staggering to consider how technology has been so horrifyingly misapplied in this instance. Explorers were able, through sophisticated devices, to discover that there is a vast reservoir of oil out there beyond sight of land. Engineers developed machinery that can dig through solid rock, another mile below the ocean floor, in order to get at that reservoir. Because we “just gotta” have that oil! Cruelly ironic that we have developed astounding technology in order to drill through bedrock, but have not developed applications to produce or harvest energy that doesn’t send the environment, our one and only home planet, down a tailspin of degradation. Humans, like ferrets, are more determined than they are bright.

Lemmings don’t really commit mass suicide. It turns out that that is a myth. The whole myth developed like a meme in reaction to some wildlife footage shot in the mid 1950s, and televised frequently thereafter, for a Disney-produced wildlife documentary. Multiple generations watched in horror, on their upholstered couches (and I was among them) as a mass desperation forced the pathetic critters to fling themselves out over a cliff, into the cold, cruel sea, where they swam a futile swim to exhaustion and a watery death. This was a culling process of nature, we were taught to believe; that as their population exploded beyond a certain point, instinct forced them into behavior that they would never otherwise consider, as if a switch had been thrown by Mother Nature. The footage itself, and how it was presented, was hokum. First of all, the “documentary” aspect of the scene that fused itself in our brains has been challenged. The animals we saw were herded, it is now alleged. The rush hour subway density of lemmings was staged in order to heighten their panic. Lemmings do behave radically when their population exceeds a certain quotient. They do fan out in all directions in search of new habitat. They do, if they encounter a body of water, jump in, in order to explore the land, and its food potential, on the other side. But lemmings are very good swimmers. More often that not, as in WAY more often than not, the majority of them reach the other side. Therefore, the fact that they were transported to an inhospitable coast by filmmakers is all the more ghastly. Those critters thought they had a good chance of crossing over, because in a natural situation, they would have. Alas, this all too convenient, and frequently used, metaphor for our own existential situation is forced and inaccurate. We do not have allies among our fellow animals (or at least if we do, it is not the misunderstood lemming) in plunging carelessly toward our own demise. We as a mammalian species are alone in engaging in obviously suicidal behavior, with the concomitant collateral side effect of taking billions of other life forms with us.

And there can be no mistake, this IS the direction we are heading. One of Einstein’s most famous quotes is that problems cannot be solved at the level of consciousness at which they were created, and yet many hasten to assure us that technology, for all the devastation it has wrought since the Industrial Revolution, is nevertheless the solution to the ills we face today. Apparently, according to this way of thinking, it is now incumbent upon our technology to transform itself into Superman, and rescue us from the death trap its Lex Luthor alter ego has placed us in. Uh….right.

Technology is not the answer. Nor is it the problem, per se, so much as it is a symptom. There is a sickness affecting humanity that threatens our very survival as a species. We have lost touch with our center, our very DNA, and are behaving as if we are not part of this earth any more. We base our way of life on a system that will stop working in less time than the duration between now and Shakespeare. It is utter madness, but we go about our lives as if it will all work out somehow. We are the true “lemmings”, and our divorce from our naturalness will not, and cannot possibly be, solved by forcing ourselves even deeper into the ouroboros that is the left hemisphere of our brain, there to extract ever newer technologies to serve as antidotes to the technologies that are being run with such destructive consequences in our modern civilization.

Our survival as a species has nothing to do with technological geekery or, as some technophiles have suggested, “heading out to the stars”. Imagine the audacity! We trash life on this planet, but hey, it’s okay, so long as we learn to cultivate our own moon, or the moons of Jupiter or wherever. The very fact that some would consider this to be a solution is indicative itself that something is really wrong with our current mindset. A species, a contributing member of the biosphere and completely dependent on it, deluding itself that it can pick up and move elsewhere if need be. The Sufis advise us to “be in the world but not of it”. Sound advice when its meaning relates to an individual striving for peace of mind. But for the human race as a collective, the admonition should be, “Be in the world and don’t forget for a moment that YOU ARE OF IT!” Ours has been a history of pulling ourselves out of the real Matrix, the impeccable miracle that is our planet’s propensity to, generously, host ecosystems based on the simplest and most brilliant of exchanges – oxygen for carbon dioxide, food for fertilizer, death for life – and placing ourselves in an unreal Matrix that weakens us fundamentally and threatens us existentially. And we must learn how to stop.

Surely Tokyo, where I live, is one of the most wasteful cities on the entire planet. The foods that are thrown away each day, the electricity used in the neon light signs and giant televisions advertising bubblegum pop music in front of the major train stations; the air conditioners blasting out from four million domiciles in the summer, raising the temperature two degrees (Celsius) higher than outside the city; the appliances and computers and cellphones that are pitched and replaced rather than repaired, etc.; taken together this would easily provide enough food and energy and sundries to supply a city of a million or more people each day. And yet, a mere hundred and fifty odd years ago, Tokyo, or as it was then called, Edo, was a very different place altogether. It was, as has been suggested in a book by novelist/historian Eisuke Ishikawa titled “The Edo Period had a Recycling Society”, the most environmentally efficient city on the face of the earth. The Japanese of Old Edo were not self consciously preserving their environment so much as they were subconsciously aware of themselves as part of the environment. Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the commercial use of “night soil”, a lovely euphemism for human excrement, as a fertilizer. If you were to go back to Edo and stop by a roadside teahouse, you might meet a man who would proudly tell you, “I sell shit”. And why not be proud? While Europeans were risking plague at every turn, throwing their raw sewage out onto the street, the Japanese were living healthily and sanitarily, giving their produce back to the earth, so that it could continue to yield its produce for their use. This is the way of things, it is what Nature teaches us, and yet it is something that we have forgotten. Instead, we eat chemically fertilized foods, laced with pesticides and denuded of nutrients, and dump (literally) that into our water supply, of all places! We have night soil for brains, it seems!

We have to, metaphorically if not literally, return to the wilds and become creatures of the forest again. In a forest, absolutely nothing is wasted. Not air, not sunlight, not a drop of rain or sweat, not a carcass or a pellet of shit. A forest can run, continually rejuvenating itself, for millennia, once a system is set in place. In a place called Gaviotas, in Colombia, a group of scientists and environmental engineers figured out a way to put a rainforest back where the desert had encroached, and not by simply planting trees. They built it up from the ground floor, beginning with the small plants that would have originally grown there, and moving forward incrementally. Almost miraculously, the birds began to appear as if from nowhere. And the lizards, and the rodents. Over time, the forest was back, and all its creatures were working in harmony. Gaia knew what to do, and just needed a nudge.

I am not idealizing forest life as if it is some sort of trans-species hippiefest waiting to welcome us back. In any given clump of dirt in a forest that you may happen to pick up with your bare hand, an atrocity is occuring. The little things of this planet dispense with each other in ways so gruesome and cruel that they would blush the faces of the most depraved Medieval torturer. It can easily be surmised that the very terrors of the natural world have impacted our psychology and seeded our destructiveness. We needed to learn to use our brains for protection, for offense and defense. We would not have survived had we not learned to attack, fight for our very lives, take without asking. It’s part of who we are and it was bequeathed to us by Gaia. We are her legacy. Nevertheless, that is not an excuse to stay on our present course as it leads down a road toward extinction. We can use our minds to imagine, and create, a new Eden. Our children can be the butterflies and birds that spread the seeds and nectar, through their vigor and curiosity. Our senior citizens can be the massive sycamores that hold the very life of the forest in their hearts and minds. Every one of us must discover our place in this new “human forest” before we can reintegrate ourselves with the broader ecosystem both on our terms and its. Because what we are really wasting more than anything is our minds, and what we are destroying is our humanness. We have to remember what that means first, to be human. If we want to be sane again.

A few weeks ago in Montana, there was a horrible story about an abused kitten named Mercy. Someone had kicked him, stomped him in the head, and tried to drown him. He had apparently abused this kitten for hours. He was taken to a vet with numerous broken bones. He was then sent to an animal hospital in Spokane where they were forced to put him to sleep because his spine was fractured in several places.

Very sad story.

Wait, it gets sadder.

When a newspaper ran a front-page story on the incident, it predictably created a firestorm of a reaction. There were dozens of posts on that newspapers’ Web site saying the guy should be strung up, etc. Several people demanded to know where the person lived because they wanted to beat the hell out of him.

The guy was not arrested immediately. He apparently told the police he was suffering from clinical depression, but then he also claimed someone else beat and tortured the kitten. The police didn’t arrest him immediately. For two or three days, people apparently showed up at this guy’s door. He apparently received a number of threatening calls. After the kitten died, the police showed up at his door with an arrest warrant for cruelty to animals. With the police standing at the front door, he shot himself.

I hope the whole incident left some of those people posting threats on the Internet thinking long and hard about their actions. The incident has sparked a wide range of reactions. Some people are still saying, “Good. I’m glad he offed himself.” While others say, “people care more about animals than people.” Still others say people care more about kittens than aborted babies.

I have torn feelings about the whole thing. Honestly, I feel more sympathy for the kitten than I do the abuser, I guess because of its pure innocence, but I’m not without any sympathy for the abuser. This was not simply just a jerk. He was a victim in his own way. He was obviously a deeply troubled and ill person who badly needed help and didn‘t get it. He got threats. He didn’t deserve death. He deserved a couple of years in prison — and therapy and treatment.

I think a number of people blew it here. The cops blew it by not taking the guy in for observation when the abuse first happened. He told them he was seriously depressed. The people posting comments online threatening him were blowing it. Their anger was understandable, anyone reading the story felt it, but the online rhetoric got completely out of control. It turned into a weird kind of online mob rule. I have no doubt the abuser was reading those comments and threats.

And frankly, in my opinion, while I think the newspaper was correct to cover the incident the way it did — like I said it predictably got a big reaction from the community and even across the country — I think the paper did blow it by allowing those threatening comments to be posted on its Web site.

There is one hint of silver lining that came out of this. Because so many people felt so badly about Mercy, the local animal shelter received tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from across the country. And at a local “cat day” at the Humane Society, the shelter was swarmed by people adopting cats and kittens because they were touched by the Mercy story.

There was some silver lining. When the story of Mercy first came I out, I posted something on Facebook saying everyone should give their dogs and cats a big hug. I did that day.

Right on schedule, a customized semi-truck pulls up in the parking lot. The load resembles a storage container, only it’s about half as high and lined with six small metal doors on each side. Behind these doors are 21 retired racing greyhounds.

The “processing” begins. The driver comes around — tired and grim-faced, perhaps indicative of the uneasy relationship that exists between the greyhound racing industry and the hundreds of rescue groups that have sprung up across the nation over the past ten or twenty years.

He opens the first door to reveal a large pile of thickly shredded paper. Emerging from the tangle is a skinny white-and-brindle greyhound. The driver quickly slips on a collar and leash and muzzles her. Volunteers mill around, check her body for injuries — there’s a nickel-sized gash on her left rear leg and a long tear on the inside of the same leg. They snap a quick picture for the greyhound adoption website, and read the tattooes in her ears. The tattooes indicate the month and year she was born and her birth order within the litter. In a week or so, volunteer veterinarians will spay or neuter the dogs and give them their first series of shots.

It turns out this first girl to come out is my new foster. Her racing name is Country Girl. After checking her for fleas and ticks, I slip a dog coat over her bony frame and take her for her first walk. I’m hoping she’ll pee but it’s too cold out and she doesn’t cooperate. She’s never been on a walk before, so she pulls this way and that, unsure about what to do. She walks on her tip toes and hops around because the ground is cold and she’s probably never encountered snow or ice before. She’s also never seen a park, a lake, a tree. In front of us, a flock of geese takes flight and she is spell-bound at the sight. However, after just a few minutes, she begins to “shut down” and I have to pull her along.

The foster coordinator I work with is an expert tick-remover so I ask her to have another look. The foster dog I got last summer was covered with more than two dozen ticks, but Country Girl seems clean. We say our goodbyes and I lift her into the back of my Subaru Forester. Teaching her to jump into the car will be one of my first chores, along with using the doggie door, walking properly on a leash and going up and down stairs.  As we take off in the warm car, she finally pees all over the dog blanket I have in the back, so I pull over, yank out the blanket, put up the backseats and get her settled in the far back where any further “incidents” won’t ruin my car.

The foster greyhound’s first night in a real home is always the toughest. Before this day, Country Girl has spent up to 22 hours a day sitting in a “sphinx” position in a crate. Her stomach and haunches are bald from rubbing against the wires. She knows nothing about the world, nothing about being a pet. Before the evening is over, she has peed twice in the house and has spent at least two hours pacing. She stares at the TV, whines at the cat (she has been tested “cat-safe.”), and sniffs my own greyhounds, who are annoyed at this dorky new kid who doesn’t know how to act.

I’ve got six vials of de-wormer and her first dose doesn’t go down that well. It’s a milky liquid in a large plastic injector and she spits it out as quickly as I squirt it into her mouth. All the greys from the south arrive with worms, ticks and fleas. Retired racers are also grossly underweight — Country Girl probably weighs 45 to 50 pounds — she will gain a good 15 or 20 pounds within the next two months, adding at least 25% of her current weight.

At the racetrack, they are fed a high-protein but obviously meager diet of 4-D meat from diseased livestock. This night she has her first meal of dog food, which will send her digestive system into a tizzy that might last the rest of her life. (After six years, I still haven’t gotten the digestion of one of my own dogs stabilized). I give her acidophilus and stewed pumpkin which will help. She’s too excited and confused to eat much at first, but before the evening ends, her bowl is empty. By tomorrow, when she has settled down, she will begin a period of ravenous eating.

When it’s time for bed, I put her in a large wire crate filled with soft blankets. I turn on the nearby desktop computer and leave it streaming a classical station all night, with the monitor turned on and facing her. Despite these “comforts,” she cries all night long. I get up once at five in the morning, bundle her up in a coat and take her out to the backyard. It is snowing and beautiful out. She runs around the yard, shivering and wagging her tail, jumping up to get her feet out of the freezing snow. Finally, she relieves herself and I praise her lavishly. The first sign of house-breaking!

Country Girl is only three years old so she’s been retired early. Retirement comes when the greyhound doesn’t win enough — that is, when the owner is not making money off the dog. This particular kennel owner has taken the trouble of driving his rejected dogs all the way to Colorado. Many greyhound racing dogs are not so lucky. According to the Greyhound Protection League, “Over the last two decades, hundreds of cases of abuse have been documented including greyhounds that were shot, starved, electrocuted and sold for research. Industry insiders report that this is only the tip of the iceberg.” Those that aren’t killed are sometimes sent to Juarez and other racetracks in Mexico, where the outlook for the a dog is notoriously bleak. Other greyhounds are sent to research facilities and veterinarian schools where they are used for experiments and “training” exercises.

That, however, will not be the fate of Country Girl, this skin-and-bones greyhound from Oklahoma, nor for the other 20 dogs from yesterday’s haul. Today, Country Girl will get her first flea bath, followed up by a towel rub-down and a doggie treat. After that, she’ll pace around the house for awhile, sniff at the kitty, who will hiss at her again, and then she’ll do the greyhound stretch/bow, then curl up on a soft doggie bed for a nap. She will follow me around the house, leaning against me whenever possible — she has already shown signs of being a “velcro dog.” In two or three weeks, an excited family will come along and take her away to her “forever home.” My two greyhounds will jump for joy that the dork that took so much of my attention is finally gone, and I will  feel the loss — as I always do — for a long time after.