I met this woman in a summer camp. She was about thirty-five, blue-eyed with thin features of her rather pretty face. She wore her fair hair short not because it became her but because she didn't care for hairstyles. She didn't even trouble to dye the greying strands of hair. Her usual outfit was a colourless T-shirt and old-fashioned baggy jeans.
Her name was Rita if my memory serves me right. She never got married and , indeed, she was so shy it was imposible to imagine her ruling the household. You'd sooner picture her being ordered about by babies. Her voice sounded so faintly that it seemed she could hardly hear it herself. Rita was the last one to take her dinner in the dining room and ate it in hurried quietness sitting in the corner. When anybody addressed her she blushed and stammered replying even if it was the youngest teenager.As she walked on the camp paths she looked down and kept to the side.
Rita was an ornithologist by profession.She knew all birds by their feathers and by their flight. She could tell you which bird it was even if you pointed to a tiny speck in the sky. Birds were the subject in which she was knowledgeable and that was when she became voluble. Rita could talk on ornithology without end. With shining eyes she would describe the habits of birds, her voice would sound excited and it had a nice tone, by the way.
Once she told us of a baby owl which she had found in the woods. She saw it on the ground under a tree. The nest in the hole some feet above the ground was destroyed by some animal. Rita took that tiny baby owl home and was looking after it. She told us that the bird was so small it needed a specially cooked food. So Rita chopped little mice into tiny pieces for that bird. That was the only food the baby owl ate.
The picture of that timid woman depriving one creature of its life for the sake of another stuck in me. Aren't we all like Rita in this way? Finding courage and being ruthless when we feel we are in the right? Or are we all beasts inside?
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The end justifies the means though most of the time the end and the means are totally divergent. Life is cruel. Sometimes, we have to sacrifice something in order to save something else. You have to give in order to be given. Sometimes, what we feel is right is just the opposite, that is, wrong and vice versa.
Thanks, AH, you've made a thorough study of my blogs. Now it is my turn!! Though I seldom read blogs if not asked....
I want to read more from your writings.
Viet, I agree with most of what you say.I am sometimes ashamed of chewing tomatoes :)))( kidding) Thanks for the comment
Similarly, for Rita's action, I don't take it as a brutal or ruthless one and don't suppose that she feels that she is right or find mice as worthless creatures. It just may be that her love for the owl is big enough to convince herself to act as she ought to be. In some cases, we still act when we know it's wrong, but it might be no offence indeed. She is a hearty ornithologist, not a hearty person who studies mice :)
Take an interesting example in the series "What's the right thing to do" by Harvard's professor Michael Sandel " Suppose you are a driver of a trolley car and your trolley car is hurtling down the track at 60 miles an hour and at the end of the track you notice five workers working on the track. You try to stop but you can't. Your brakes don't work. You fell desperate because you know that if you crash into these five workers they will all die. And you feel helpless until you notice that there is, off to the right, a side track. At the end of that track there's one worker working on the track. So you can turn the trolley car if you want to onto the side track, killing the one but sparing the five. What's the right thing to do? What would you do? I don't think he is inhumane when he decides the right or the left to turn. But in a case when a driver intentionally hits a person because he is being chased by police or he is hasty of work , he is disgustedly cold-blooded.
I saw some TV programs about national parks. The keepers there never interfere when one animal kills another.
Indeed, Rita must have thought that baby mice are only food or they are a worthles species. But she was bold enough to kill them, that's what not any of us can do. Her love to birds made her unfeeling towards mice.
It's the law of nature. Some are meant to be preys, and some are meant to be the hunters. I like to think we have our own places in this world. 'Killings' for the sake of surviving doesn't meant we are cruel and ruthless. Killings for enjoyment, for the sake of a few trophies on the walls, to show another notch to others, for trying to show that we are superior than the others, that's cruel. That's ruthless.
Your story reminds me of one great sacrifice that saved the human beings from eternal death. I think sacrificing for the benefit of the others is worth a sacrifice.
In this world, we all depend on something/someone in order to survive. Some living things are meant as foods and are hardly called "sacrifices". We can't say we mercilessly kill a chicken for our own consumption. Just like what Rita had done. The mice was meant as the baby owl's food. I also chop chicken into smaller parts but this does not make me cruel simply because I mercilessly killed and chopped the chicken.
Rather, human beings act like beasts when they did some heinous crimes like murder or rape. Slanders, false accusations, stripes, etc are but products of beastlike attitudes.
I was touched by one characteristic of Rita, by the way. In spite of her inconspicuous personality, she always stands out from the rest by being perfectly articulate about birds.
Once , I saw a video of lion hunted a nice rabbit after a long chasing .I felt sad and sorry for this rabbit .Next ,the lion brought it to his three kids which were waiting their father eagerly .
Then , I heaved a deep sigh and my mood had exchanged, I became happy when I saw little kids of lion ate the rabbit .It is the law of nature dear Inna
Thank you for sharing nice blog .
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