Injured Animal Quotes

She blinked at me, then realized I was panicking. Honestly, it was like admitting to murder before being interrogated. “Ms. Davidson,” she began, but I decided to trip her up, to throw her off the trail of blood I’d left like an injured animal. “I don’t speak English.

In response to threat and injury, animals, including humans, execute biologically based, non-conscious action patterns that prepare them to meet the threat and defend themselves. The very structure of trauma, including activation, dissociation and freezing are based on the evolution of survival behaviors. When threatened or injured, all animals draw from a "library" of possible responses. We orient, dodge, duck, stiffen, brace, retract, fight, flee, freeze, collapse, etc. All of these coordinated responses are somatically based- they are things that the body does to protect and defend itself. It is when these orienting and defending responses are overwhelmed that we see trauma. The bodies of traumatized people portray "snapshots" of their unsuccessful attempts to defend themselves in the face of threat and injury. Trauma is a highly activated incomplete biological response to threat, frozen in time. For example, when we prepare to fight or to flee, muscles throughout our entire body are tensed in specific patterns of high energy readiness. When we are unable to complete the appropriate actions, we fail to discharge the tremendous energy generated by our survival preparations. This energy becomes fixed in specific patterns of neuromuscular readiness. The person then stays in a state of acute and then chronic arousal and dysfunction in the central nervous system. Traumatized people are not suffering from a disease in the normal sense of the word- they have become stuck in an aroused state. It is difficult if not impossible to function normally under these circumstances.

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it. 'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys. 'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.' 'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.' 'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys. 'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.' They moved on.

In my mind there is a scale. I do not know how many small lives add up to a big one, or if there is a formula to work it out. How many cats do I have to save? How many dogs? How many injured animals on the road do I have to drag to safety, their blood on my hands, their wild-smelling hair on my clothes?

Are you Charley Davidson?” she asked, her Mexican accent soft, the sharpness in her tone anything but. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I panicked right alongside Angel. It was the only thing I could think to say. “I don’t know. What?” She blinked at me, then realized I was panicking. Honestly, it was like admitting to murder before being interrogated. “Ms. Davidson,” she began, but I decided to trip her up, to throw her off the trail of blood I’d left like an injured animal. “I don’t speak English.

For example, the main reason zebras never got domesticated is that they’re ultra-high-fear. Zebras may bite people and not let go. They injure more people in zoos than the tigers do.15

Ly-di-ah! I sit beneath your window, laaaass, singing ’cause I loooove your a—” “For the love of St. Francis of Assisi, someone call a vet. There is an injured animal screaming in pain outside,” Charlotte interrupted the flow of music in ill-humor.

I didn't mean to save him all my firsts. But it happened, and a part of me is glad that it did. Because he was the first boy to give me a gift. The first boy to kiss me. To want to become my friend not because I was popular, but because I was me. He was the first boy who noticed the injured animal behind the camouflage of hostility and tried to give it water and shelter.

Get Comfortable Not Knowing There once was a village that had among its people a very wise old man. The villagers trusted this man to provide them answers to their questions and concerns. One day, a farmer from the village went to the wise man and said in a frantic tone, “Wise man, help me. A horrible thing has happened. My ox has died and I have no animal to help me plow my field! Isn’t this the worst thing that could have possibly happened?” The wise old man replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.” The man hurried back to the village and reported to his neighbors that the wise man had gone mad. Surely this was the worst thing that could have happened. Why couldn’t he see this? The very next day, however, a strong, young horse was seen near the man’s farm. Because the man had no ox to rely on, he had the idea to catch the horse to replace his ox—and he did. How joyful the farmer was. Plowing the field had never been easier. He went back to the wise man to apologize. “You were right, wise man. Losing my ox wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. It was a blessing in disguise! I never would have captured my new horse had that not happened. You must agree that this is the best thing that could have happened.” The wise man replied once again, “Maybe so, maybe not.” Not again, thought the farmer. Surely the wise man had gone mad now. But, once again, the farmer did not know what was to happen. A few days later the farmer’s son was riding the horse and was thrown off. He broke his leg and would not be able to help with the crop. Oh no, thought the man. Now we will starve to death. Once again, the farmer went to the wise man. This time he said, “How did you know that capturing my horse was not a good thing? You were right again. My son is injured and won’t be able to help with the crop. This time I’m sure that this is the worst thing that could have possibly happened. You must agree this time.” But, just as he had done before, the wise man calmly looked at the farmer and in a compassionate tone replied once again, “Maybe so, maybe not.” Enraged that the wise man could be so ignorant, the farmer stormed back to the village. The next day troops arrived to take every able-bodied man to the war that had just broken out. The farmer’s son was the only young man in the village who didn’t have to go. He would live, while the others would surely die. The moral of this story provides a powerful lesson. The truth is, we don’t know what’s going to happen—we just think we do. Often we make a big deal out of something. We blow up scenarios in our minds about all the terrible things that are going to happen. Most of the time we are wrong. If we keep our cool and stay open to possibilities, we can be reasonably certain that, eventually, all will be well. Remember: maybe so, maybe not.

Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. One knows, indeed, what their ways bring: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.

You watch cute dog videos today. Tomorrow you discover videos of injured animals. Then you discover videos on animal cruelty. Then you get angry. Then you start seeing cruelty everywhere. News and incidents of cruelty reach you before anyone else. You start going deeper and deeper into an endless spiral.

If a snail’s shell gets injured, a repair can be made quickly. New shell material is secreted by the mantle, and where there was once a crack, a scar appears, looking much like a skin scar. Even a missing shell section can be replaced. Oliver Goldsmith described this in 1774: Sometimes these animals are crushed seemingly to pieces, and, to all appearance, utterly destroyed; yet still they set themselves to work, and, in a few days, mend all their numerous breaches . . . to the re-establishment of the ruined habitation. But all the junctures are very easily seen, for they have a fresher colour than the rest; and the whole shell, in some measure, resembles an old coat patched with new pieces.

My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. One knows, indeed, what their ways bring: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic [genüsslich] — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.

I wanted you to kiss me, Jack," I say, bereft. It's not as if he isn't aware what I wanted back there; to be coy would be pointless. "I don't like myself for it." He strokes my hair, cups my chin, looks me in the eyes. "If I tell you something, do you promise to never tell another living soul, not even a goldfish?" I swallow, eye to eye with him as I nod, and he takes my face between both of his hands. Whatever he's about to say, I think it's something I'm going to remember forever. "I wanted to kiss you back there in the pub, Laurie, and I want to kiss you even more right now. You're one of the loveliest people I've ever met in my whole life." He looks away, down the length of the deserted street and then back at me again. "You're beautiful and kind, and you make me laugh, and when you look at me like that with your summer hedgerow eyes...only a fucking saint wouldn't kiss you." Then he leans me against the wall with the weight of his body, and because he isn't a fucking saint, he kisses me. Jack O'Mara dips his head and kisses me in the snow, his lips trembling and then hot and sure, and I'm crying and kissing him back, opening my mouth to let his tongue slide over mine as he makes this low, injured animal noise in his throat. I feel the relief of him in every follicle of my hair, and in every cell of my body, and in the blood in my veins. His breathing is as shallow as mine, and it's so much more than I've ever imagined, and trust me, I used to let my imagination run riot where Jack O'Mara was concerned. He holds my face as if I'm precious and then pushes his fingers into my hair, cupping my head in his hands when I tip it back. This is the only time we will ever kiss each other. He knows it, I know it, and it's so achingly melancholy-sexy that I feel tears threaten again.

I made spasmodic efforts to work, assuring myself that once I began working I would forget her. The difficulty was in beginning. There was a feeling of weakness, a sort of powerlessness now, as though I were about to be ill but was never quite ill enough, as though I were about to come down with something I did not quite come down with. It seemed to me that for the first time in my life I had been in love, and had lost, because of the grudgingness of my heart, the possibility of having what, too late, I now thought I wanted. What was it that all my life I had so carefully guarded myself against? What was it that I had felt so threatened me? My suffering, which seemed to me to be a strict consequence of having guarded myself so long, appeared to me as a kind of punishment, and this moment, which I was now enduring, as something which had been delayed for half a lifetime. I was experincing, apparently, an obscure crisis of some kind. My world acquired a tendency to crumble as easily as a soda cracker. I found myself horribly susceptible to small animals, ribbons in the hair of little girls, songs played late at night over lonely radios. It became particularly dangerous for me to go near movies in which crippled girls were healed by the unselfish love of impoverished bellhops. I had become excessively tender to all the more obvious evidences of the frailness of existence; I was capable of dissolving at the least kind word, and self-pity, in inexhaustible doses, lay close to my outraged surface. I moved painfully, an ambulatory case, mysteriously injured.

It was the hour of prayer. Black-beetles exploded against the walls like crackers. More than a dozen crawled over the tiles with injured wings. It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy — a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all. He knew.

I am sorry, Miss Grey, you should think it necessary to interfere with Master Bloomfield's amusements; he was very much distressed about you destroying the birds.' 'When Master Bloomfield's amusements consist in injuring sentient creatures,' I answered, 'I think it my duty to interfere.' 'You seemed to have forgotten,' said she, calmly, 'that the creatures were all created for our convenience.' I thought that doctrine admitted some doubt, but merely replied - 'If they were, we have no right to torment them for our amusement.

zoo so that all the lost, frightened and injured animals he met on his travels would have somewhere safe to live. Zoe’s mum, Lucy, was the zoo vet. Lucy and Zoe lived in a little cottage at the edge of the zoo, so that whenever an animal was poorly or injured, Lucy was close

My conception of freedom. -- The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it -- what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic -- every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization. These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free -- and how much more the spirit who has become free -- spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, who attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong -- otherwise one will never become strong. Those large hothouses for the strong -- for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known -- the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers

To attempt to change circumstances before I change my own imaginal activity is to struggle against the very nature of my own being, for my own imaginal activity is animating my world. If I believe that I am injured or that others are against me, I have conjured them in my world, and they have to be against me. If I fully believe that all are working towards the fulfillment of my good, they have to work towards the fulfillment of my good. I don’t ask them. I don’t compel them. I simply do it only within myself, and the whole vast world exists within me. Therefore, it is myself “pushed out.” It’s objectified. I don’t have to change affairs; I only change it within myself, and then every one, though I know him or not by name, – it doesn’t really matter, – it’s myself “pushed out.

Dante’s notions of sin are shaped largely by the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. In his famous Summa Theologiae, Aquinas argues that any evil action or sin is a form of self-destruction. He assumes that human beings have a nature that is supposed to be rational and good. Aquinas conceives of this nature, that of the rational animal, as being created by God specifically to pursue goodness, more specifically, the virtues. When a human being departs from this natural purpose, she injures herself, for she does what she was not intended to do. She wars against herself and her nature. Why does Aquinas hold this peculiar view of sin? One reason is because he accepts Boethius’ assertion that goodness and being are convertible. In other words, anything that exists has some goodness in it because God made it. And no matter how marred or broken or sinful that being is, it still maintains some goodness so long as it exists. According to this view, no one, not even Lucifer encased in ice at the bottom of Dante’s Inferno, is wholly evil. Evil can only feed off of goodness like a parasite; if all the goodness of a creature were eliminated, the creature in question would no longer exist.

He was an animal. Everyone knows never to corner one that's injured...even if it is just his pride.

My point here is that the grieving are very dangerous, Richard said. They are like injured animals with fearsome claws, bloodied and pushed into a corner. Okay, said Clare. They are deranged, he continued. They shouldn't be let out of the house. Immediately after the funeral some sort of waiting period should be instituted, a period of confinement. It is a matter of public safety.

The fundamental principle of morality which we seek as a necessity for thought is not, however, a matter only of arranging and deepening current views of good and evil, but also of expanding and extending these. A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succour, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he walks. If he works by lamplight on a summer evening, he prefers to keep the window shut and to breathe stifling air, rather than to see insect after insect fall on his table with singed and sinking wings.

If a snail’s shell gets injured, a repair can be made quickly. New shell material is secreted by the mantle, and where there was once a crack, a scar appears, looking much like a skin scar. Even a missing shell section can be replaced. Oliver Goldsmith described this in 1774: Sometimes these animals are crushed seemingly to pieces, and, to all appearance, utterly destroyed; yet still they set themselves to work, and, in a few days, mend all their numerous breaches … to the re-establishment of the ruined habitation. But all the junctures are very easily seen, for they have a fresher colour than the rest; and the whole shell, in some measure, resembles an old coat patched with new pieces.

Gradually, it sank in. The Mother Beast was dead. I had killed her. The taste of her blood burned in my mouth. Behind her, a deep black hole bore into the ground beneath the remnants of the railroad car. It must have been her underground lair. She had raised her brood there, safe and far away from everyone, until Kyle's crew invaded her den. Such an awful waste. None of this was necessary. At least one person died, many others were injured, and this great magnificient beast and her brood lost their lives all because Kyle Bell wanted to make a quick buck on the side. He stood by the remnants of the tent now, arms crossed, barking orders. I marched over to Kyle. He saw me, opened his mouth, and I backhanded him. The blow knocked him to the ground. «This is your fault. You brought these people here. You knew this place was dangerous.» I pulled him upright and spun him toward the dead beast. «Look! People died because of you. Do you understand that? If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have had to murder her. She was just protecting her children.» «She tried to kill us!» I backhanded him again. «She tried to kill you because you broke into her house.» The workers stood around us, thier faces grim. Nobody made any move to help their boss. *** I found my bow and quiver and walked away. Ascanio jumped off the beast and joined me. His voice was a deep growl, shredded by his teeth. «It. Wash. Aweshome.» «This was a tragedy.» People came before animals. I knew that, but when you turn into an animal, your perspective is a little different. «Yesh. But aweshome.» He was a boy. What did he know?

The expression just set me on edge. He had the look of an injured wild animal. I imagined a hungry lion limping in front of me with a bloody paw. No matter how much the beast stumbled or bled, one would have to always remember that the creature could tear the average human body in half.

It was something he had never quite understood about himself. He had seen thousands of men die in nearly ten years of war and could look on it at times with a near-total detachment, but an animal suffering - be it a horse or needra injured in battle, or the stag now dying - moved him deeply.

HE WHO acts unjustly acts impiously. For since the universal nature has made rational animals for the sake of one another to help one another according to their deserts, but in no way to injure one another, he who transgresses her will, is clearly guilty of impiety towards the highest divinity.

We’ve created mass production at low prices, a system that operates under duress. There are stressed-out pigs who can’t mate, who bite one another’s tails because they’re so confined, or who are so heavy their legs can no longer support their bodies; turkeys who can’t reproduce naturally; chickens who have to be debeaked because they peck at each other in densely packed cages; roosters bred for growth who’ve become so aggressive that they injure or kill their mates; and cows who eat other cows as part of their feed and go mad. All of this is presided over by stressed-out farmers, many of whom have come to accept the industry’s bigger-is-better mantra, though it’s clearly unsustainable for them and the earth. In the process they have become almost as trapped as the animals they “farm.” Farmers, industry, and consumers have created a treadmill that runs ever more rapidly, fueled by all kinds of suffering animals—including us. It’s a system that only takes and doesn’t give back; it extracts and doesn’t replenish, until the creatures and the earth that sustain its existence have nothing more to give.

It contained a sad, but too common story of the hard-heartedness of the wealthy, and the misery endured by the children of the highborn. Blood is not water, it is said, but gold with them is dearer far than the ties of nature; to keep and augment their possessions being the aim and end of their lives, the existence, and, more especially, the happiness of their children, appears to them a consideration at once trivial and impertinent, when it would compete with family views and family greatness. To this common and and iniquitous feeling these luckless beings were sacrificed; they had endured the worst, and could be injured no more; but their orphan child was a living victim, less thought of than the progeny of the meanest animal which might serve to augment their possessions. Mrs. Baker felt some complacency on reading this letter; with the common English respect for wealth and rank, she was glad to find that her humble roof had sheltered a man who was the son — she did not exactly know of whom, but of somebody, who had younger sons and elder sons, and possessed, through wealth, the power of behaving frightfully ill to a vast number of persons.

Animals arrive at slaughter exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and terrified. Every year 100,000 factory farmed cattle arrive at slaughter injured, or too dispirited to walk; undercover investigators have repeatedly documented downed animals who are kicked, beaten, pushed with bulldozers, and dragged from transport trucks with ropes or a chain, though they are fully conscious, in pain, and bellowing pitifully. Cows exploited in the dairy industry, because they are older and their bodies have been exhausted by perpetual pregnancy, birthing, and milking, are among the most pathetic when they arrive at slaughter.

As the driver pulled over to attend the injured animal, I sat and watched the sky - an oceanic mass of gray, with islands of steel blue - thinking, yes, certainly, birds must sleep at times while they fly. How ridiculous it was to think otherwise. Yet my brothers' tutor, a man from Oxford with red eyebrows, had informed me the previous morning that no such thing could occur. Such a thing, he'd opined, would be an affront to God, who had blessed birds with the ability to sleep and the ability to fly, but not the ability to sleep while flying or fly while sleeping. Absurd! Moreover, he went on, were it to be case, each morning we would find at our feet heaps of dead birds that had smashed into rooftops or trees in the night. Night after night we would be awakened by this ornithological cacophony, this smashing of beaks against masonry, this violence of feathers and bones. It will not do, he said, to too greatly admire the mysteries of nature. But I remembered that sparrow on the riverbank and secretly held that the world was not so easily explained by a tutor's reason. Indeed, it was then that I first formed the opinion - if childishly, idly - that a person should trust to her own good sense and nature's impenetrable wisdom.

Beatrix didn't walk, she explored. She liked to go deep into the forest, investigating flora, fungi, nests, webs, and holes in the ground. Nothing delighted the youngest Hathaway so much as the discovery of a black newt, a lizard's nest, or a rabbit warren, or the tracking of badgers' marks. Injured creatures were caught, rehabilitated, and set free, or if they could not fend for themselves, they became part of the Hathaway household. And the family had become so accustomed to Beatrix's animals that no one so much as batted an eye when a hedgehog waddled through the parlor or a pair of rabbits hopped past the dinner table.

Has he invited you to dinner, dear? Gifts, flowers, the usual?” I had to put my cup down, because my hand was shaking too much. When I stopped laughing, I said, “Curran? He isn’t exactly Mr. Smooth. He handed me a bowl of soup, that’s as far as we got.” “He fed you?” Raphael stopped rubbing Andrea. “How did this happen?” Aunt B stared at me. “Be very specific, this is important.” “He didn’t actually feed me. I was injured and he handed me a bowl of chicken soup. Actually I think he handed me two or three. And he called me an idiot.” “Did you accept?” Aunt B asked. “Yes, I was starving. Why are the three of you looking at me like that?” “For crying out loud.” Andrea set her cup down, spilling some tea. “The Beast Lord’s feeding you soup. Think about that for a second.” Raphael coughed. Aunt B leaned forward. “Was there anybody else in the room?” “No. He chased everyone out.” Raphael nodded. “At least he hasn’t gone public yet.” “He might never,” Andrea said. “It would jeopardize her position with the Order.” Aunt B’s face was grave. “It doesn’t go past this room. You hear me, Raphael? No gossip, no pillow talk, not a word. We don’t want any trouble with Curran.” “If you don’t explain it all to me, I will strangle somebody.” Of course, Raphael might like that . . . “Food has a special significance,” Aunt D said. I nodded. “Food indicates hierarchy. Nobody eats before the alpha, unless permission is given, and no alpha eats in Curran’s presence until Curran takes a bite.” “There is more,” Aunt B said. “Animals express love through food. When a cat loves you, he’ll leave dead mice on your porch, because you’re a lousy hunter and he wants to take care of you. When a shapeshifter boy likes a girl, he’ll bring her food and if she likes him back, she might make him lunch. When Curran wants to show interest in a woman, he buys her dinner.” “In public,” Raphael added, “the shapeshifter fathers always put the first bite on the plates of their wives and children. It signals that if someone wants to challenge the wife or the child, they would have to challenge the male first.” “If you put all of Curran’s girls together, you could have a parade,” Aunt B said. “But I’ve never seen him physically put food into a woman’s hands. He’s a very private man, so he might have done it in an intimate moment, but I would’ve found out eventually. Something like that doesn’t stay hidden in the Keep. Do you understand now? That’s a sign of a very serious interest, dear.” “But I didn’t know what it meant!” Aunt B frowned. “Doesn’t matter. You need to be very careful right now. When Curran wants something, he doesn’t become distracted. He goes after it and he doesn’t stop until he obtains his goal no matter what it takes. That tenacity is what makes him an alpha.” “You’re scaring me.” “Scared might be too strong a word, but in your place, I would definitely be concerned.” I wished I were back home, where I could get to my bottle of sangria. This clearly counted as a dire emergency. As if reading my thoughts, Aunt B rose, took a small bottle from a cabinet, and poured me a shot. I took it, and drained it in one gulp, letting tequila slide down my throat like liquid fire. “Feel better?” “It helped.” Curran had driven me to drinking. At least I wasn’t contemplating suicide.

My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization. These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free — and how much more the spirit who has become free — spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong. Those large hothouses for the strong — for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known — the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has or does not have, something one wants, something one conquers.

Pinch the foot of a mouse (or naked mole-rat) and it will pull its limb away, and probably lick and groom it. Offer painkillers and it will accept. These actions resemble what a hurt human might do, and since a rodent’s brain is similar enough to ours, we can reasonably guess that its nociceptive reflex is accompanied by pain. But such arguments by analogy are always fraught, especially when it comes to animals with very different bodies and nervous systems. A leech will writhe when pinched, but are those movements analogous to human suffering, or to an arm unconsciously pulling away from a hot pan? Other animals may hide their pain. Social creatures can call for help by whining when they’re injured, but an anguished antelope would likely keep quiet lest its distress calls convey weakness to a lion. The signs of pain vary from one species to another. How, then, do you tell if an animal is experiencing it?

The Levellers . . . only change and pervert the natural order of things: they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. . . . Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold), the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. . . . In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. . . . Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. . . . Society is, indeed, a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure; but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. . . . You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the Gospel— no interpreters of law, no general officers, no public councils. You might change the names: the things in some shape must remain. A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names— to the causes of evil, which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. . . . The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in all the great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the 'all-atoning name' of Liberty. . . . But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths. . . . To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government, that is to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.

The soul of man does violence to itself, first of all, when it becomes an abscess, and, as it were, a tumor on the universe, so far as it can. For to be vexed at anything which happens is a separation of ourselves from nature, in some part of which the natures of all other things are contained. In the next place, the soul does violence to itself when it turns away from any man, or even moves towards him with the intention of injuring, such as are the souls of those who are angry. In the third place, the soul does violence to itself when it is overpowered by pleasure or by pain. Fourthly, when it plays a part, and does or says anything insincerely and untruly. Fifthly, when it allows any act of its own and any movement to be without an aim, and does anything thoughtlessly and without considering what it is, it being right that even the smallest things be done with reference to an end; and the end of rational animals is to follow the reason and the law of the most ancient city and polity.

When an animal is sick or injured he will fight for his life with every ounce of strength he has left. It is this unshakable will to live that, if man were not so "highly evolved", would also give him the fighting spirit he needs to stay alive. It is a well known fact that many people die simply because they give up and just don't care anymore. This is understandable if the person is very ill, with no apparent chance for recovery. But this often is not the case. Man has become lazy. He has learned to take the easy way out. Even suicide has become less repugnant to many people than any number of other sins. Religion is totally to blame for this. Death, in most religions, is touted as a great spiritual awakening - one which is prepared for throughout life. This concept is very appealing to one who has not had a satisfactory life; but to those who have experiences all the joys life has to offer, there is a great dread attached to dying. This is as it should be. It is this lust of life which will allow the vital person to live on after the inevitable death of his fleshy shell.

The basic foundation of the practice of morality is to refrain from ten unwholesome actions: three pertaining to the body, four pertaining to speech, and three pertaining to thought. The three physical non-virtues are: (1) killing: intentionally taking the life of a living being, whether a human being, an animal, or even an insect; (2) stealing: taking possession of another’s property without his or her consent, regardless of its value; and (3) sexual misconduct: committing adultery. The four verbal non-virtues are: (4) lying: deceiving others through spoken word or gesture; (5) divisiveness: creating dissension by causing those in agreement to disagree or those in disagreement to disagree further; (6) harsh speech: verbally abusing others; and (7) senseless speech: talking about foolish things motivated by desire and so forth. The three mental non-virtues are: (8) covetousness: desiring to possess something that belongs to someone else; (9) harmful intent: wishing to injure others, whether in a great or small way; and (10) wrong view: holding that such things as rebirth, the law of cause and effect, or the Three Jewels8 do not exist.

Long ago there was a little boy who lived in the wood with his father and his sister. One night, the three of them were out collecting firewood when they heard a low, delicate whimper. The father realised it was an injured animal and ordered the children to fetch water from the lake, whilst he followed the sound. Hours past but the father did not return. The children became fearful for their father’s safety and in their moment of fright, they disobeyed their father in order to find him. And find him they did. However, he was no longer the man he once was. Both his eyes were slit through their centre, oozing blood down the paleness of his face. His neck had been torn open. The entirety of his midsection was split but nothing, not one, single organ, seemed to be left within. Each limb still remained, however they had been dragged, with some exceptional force, in the opposite direction to which they were designed. The children screamed and ran, though the image of their father’s mangled corpse seemed to chase after them. They slept. Within the whisper of the wind came the sweet tune of a woman’s song. The little girl awoke to the feeling of happiness, security and motherly love that the song carried with it. She needed to find the woman it had come from. Leaving her brother, she took off into the wood to try and find the singer. The little boy quickly entered into a spit of panic when he found his sister missing. He didn’t know whether he should call out for her, look for her or wait. But waiting could mean the worst, he thought, and so he took off into the woods after her. He had searched everywhere, every dark corner and decrepit tree, before reaching the lake. The moon reflected off its black surface, which drew his attention to something bobbing within the ripples. It was a leg. When he caught sight of the foot, the boy fell to his knees. He recognised the shoe. It was his sister’s shoe; his sister’s leg. Soon enough, the other body parts came drifting to join the leg, forming a rough manifestation of what was once his sister’s living body. Firstly, there was a head facing down in the water, then arms seemingly blue under the moonlight, and lastly a torso coated in her favourite dress. He felt sick, lost, terrified to his very core. Just as thoughts of never being whole again began to pain his chest, the boy heard the snapping of a twig behind him. He dared to turn around but all he found was a small, black-furred wolf. The wolf approached him timidly, whining deep in its throat to say to the boy that he too was lonely and afraid. The boy put out his hand for the wolf to join him and they sat together. Perhaps he would be OK. Perhaps all that had happened had led to this; something new. He rustled the fur of his new friend, starting with its back then its ear before going under its snout. His hand touched something wet and sticky. He drew it from the wolf to get a better look, only to find a crimson substance now clinging to his small hands. Blood. The wolf turned on the boy as its eyes became a pale blue before thwack! He tore the boy’s face from his head…

No one will think anything, Alma. It’s an empty room, remember – you said so yourself.’ I began to sit cross-legged at his feet so as to listen to his operatic flourishes. Soon I was running to meet him when he came home, then crawling up onto his lap so I could see the words on the page. I still didn’t say much, and I was mute with all strangers and continued to hide my face in my grandmother’s skirts. We were sat this way one afternoon when there was a tap at the window that startled us both. We looked, but there was nothing there. It sounded like something had been thrown at it, so my grandfather told me to stay inside while he went out to investigate. When he came back, he was carrying a tiny bird in his hands. ‘It’s a little dunnock, Susannah. He must have got himself confused, or scared, chased by a sparrowhawk maybe, and flown into the glass. He’s only stunned himself. We’ll find him a box and keep him warm, see if he comes to.’ The bird looked dead to me, but my grandfather lined an old box with straw, placed the tiny bird inside and closed the lid. ‘We need to remove him from all the terrors of the world for a while, let his little body recover. You know, it’s a very good thing for an animal to hide if he’s injured or in danger. All the clever animals do it. He crawls into the tiniest space he can find and makes his world very small. It’s a natural thing, when you’re very scared, to make your world very small indeed. The trick is to understand when the danger is gone, to be very brave and let the world be big again, or else there may as well be no world at all.

And of course if you ill-treat the body, it can throw you out of the house entirely, out of your body. It is like ill-treating objects. You know, objects are inanimate things; they lie about heavily, have no legs or wings, and people are often quite impatient with them. For instance, this book would like it very much better, I am sure, if it were lying near the center of the table where it is safe, but I have put it on the edge. It is an awkward position for that poor creature of a book. It may fall down and get injured. If I am impatient, if I touch them in an awkward way, it is a lamentable plight for the poor objects. Then they take their revenge on me. Because I illtreat them they turn against me and become contradictory in a peculiar way. I say, "Oh, these damned objects, dead things, despicable!"- and instantly they take on life. They begin to behave as if they were animated living things. You will then observe what the German philosopher tells about the die Tücke des Objekts. And the more you curse them, the more you use speech figures which insinuate life into them. For instance, "Where has that book hidden itself now? It has walked off and concealed itself somewhere." Or, "The devil is in that watch, where has it gone ?"Objects really take on dangerous qualities with people who are particularly impatient with them: they jump into your eyes, they bite your legs, they creep onto a chair and stick up a point upon which you sit-such things. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 351-352)

One day, a farmer from the village went to the wise man and said in a frantic tone, “Wise man, help me. A horrible thing has happened. My ox has died and I have no animal to help me plow my field! Isn’t this the worst thing that could have possibly happened?” The wise old man replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.” The man hurried back to the village and reported to his neighbors that the wise man had gone mad. Surely this was the worst thing that could have happened. Why couldn’t he see this? The very next day, however, a strong, young horse was seen near the man’s farm. Because the man had no ox to rely on, he had the idea to catch the horse to replace his ox—and he did. How joyful the farmer was. Plowing the field had never been easier. He went back to the wise man to apologize. “You were right, wise man. Losing my ox wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. It was a blessing in disguise! I never would have captured my new horse had that not happened. You must agree that this is the best thing that could have happened.” The wise man replied once again, “Maybe so, maybe not.” Not again, thought the farmer. Surely the wise man had gone mad now. But, once again, the farmer did not know what was to happen. A few days later the farmer’s son was riding the horse and was thrown off. He broke his leg and would not be able to help with the crop. Oh no, thought the man. Now we will starve to death. Once again, the farmer went to the wise man. This time he said, “How did you know that capturing my horse was not a good thing? You were right again. My son is injured and won’t be able to help with the crop. This time I’m sure that this is the worst thing that could have possibly happened. You must agree this time.” But, just as he had done before, the wise man calmly looked at the farmer and in a compassionate tone replied once again, “Maybe so, maybe not.” Enraged that the wise man could be so ignorant, the farmer stormed back to the village. The next day troops arrived to take every able-bodied man to the war that had just broken out. The farmer’s son was the only young man in the village who didn’t have to go. He would live, while the others would surely die. The moral of this story provides a powerful lesson.

A Russian poacher named Vladimir Markov shot and wounded a tiger but wasn’t able to track it down. Deciding that he didn’t want to walk away from the hunt empty-handed, the poacher stole part of the animal the tiger had killed and was in the process of eating when it ran away. This is where you’d expect the tiger to come bounding back into the clearing and kill the poacher. But this tiger’s brain was built more like that of Jason Voorhees. According to NPR, “The injured tiger hunted Markov down in a way that appears to be chillingly premeditated. The tiger staked out Markov’s cabin, systematically destroyed anything that had Markov’s scent on it, and then waited by the front door for Markov to come home.” Between twelve and forty-eight hours after he wounded the tiger, Markov returned home and was devoured by it,

I tried to comfort him by explaining that when we really spend time with any living beings—as he had with the ants—we find out that they are real. They are changing, animated, hungry, social. Like us, their life is fragile and they want to stay alive. His playmates hadn’t had the chance to get to know ants in the way he did, I told him. If they had, they wouldn’t want to injure them either.

The study of wildlife was a household passion. Bob loved all reptiles, even venomous snakes. Lyn took in the injured and orphaned. They made a great team, and Steve was born directly from their example and teaching. “Whenever we were driving,” Steve told me, “if we saw a kangaroo on the side of the roadway that had been killed by a car, we always stopped.” Mother and son would investigate the dead roo and, if it was female, check its pouch. They rescued dozens, maybe hundreds, of live kangaroo joeys this way, brought them home, and raised them. “We had snakes and goannas mostly, but also orphaned roo joeys, sugar gliders, and possums,” Steve said about these humble beginnings. “We didn’t have enclosures for crocodiles. That came later, after my parents became sick to death of the hatred they saw directed toward crocs.” I soon became aware that as much as Steve loved his parents equally, he got different things from each of them. Bob was his hero, his mentor, the man he wanted to become. Bob’s knowledge of reptile--and especially snake--behavior made him an invaluable resource for academics all over the country. The Queensland Museum wanted to investigate the ways of the secretive fierce snake, and Bob shared their passion. When the administrators of the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service wanted to relocate problem crocodilians, they called Bob. Meanwhile, Lyn became, in Steve’s words, “the Mother Teresa of animal rescue.” Lyn designed a substitute pouch for orphaned roo and wallaby joeys. She came up with appropriate formulas to feed them too. Lyn created the warm, nurturing environment that made Steve’s dreams, goals, and aspirations real and reachable. Steve was always a boy who loved his mum, and Lyn was the matriarch of the family. While Bob and Steve were fearless around taipans and saltwater crocs, they had the utmost respect for Lyn. She was a pioneering wildlife rehabilitator who set the mark for both Steve and myself. From the very first, I was welcomed into the Irwin family. The greatest thing was that I felt Lyn and Bob loved me not just because I was married to Steve, but for myself, for who I was. That gave me confidence to feel at home as a new arrival to Australia.

If Glenn related to anything outside of music, it was animals. When he bicycled through the countryside near his parents’ lakeside vacation cottage outside of Toronto, he sang to the cows. His pets included rabbits, turtles, a fully functioning skunk, goldfish named Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Haydn, and a parakeet named Mozart. There was also a series of beloved dogs: a big Newfoundland named Buddy, an English setter named Sir Nickolson of Garelocheed—or Nick for short—and, later, Banquo, a collie. One of Glenn’s childhood dreams was to someday create a preserve for old, injured, and stray animals on Manitoulin Island, north of Toronto, where he wanted to live out his old age by himself, surrounded by animals.

There was plenty of wildlife to film: water pythons, venomous snakes, numerous beautiful birds, koalas, possums, and all kinds of lizards. But the big croc remained elusive. Finally we found him. But something was wrong. As we approached, he failed to submerge. We were horrified to discover that the poachers had beaten us--and shot him. It was likely that he had been killed some time ago. Crocs often take a long while to die. They have the astonishing ability to shut off blood supply to an injured part of their body. The big croc had shut down and gone to the bottom of the river, at last, to succumb to his wound. He was huge, some fifteen feet long, fat and in good shape. Steve was beside himself; he felt as if the croc’s death was a personal failure. We filmed the croc and talked about what had happened. But eventually, Steve simply had to walk away. When I went to him, there were tears in his eyes. Steve had a genuine love for crocodiles and appreciated each individual animal. This croc could have been fifty years old, with mates, a family, and a history as king of this river. His death wasn’t abstract to Steve. It was personal, as though he had lost a friend, and it fueled his anger toward the poacher who had killed such a magnificent animal. Steve knew there was another croc in the area that was also in potential danger. “Maybe if we save that one,” Steve said, with resolve, “we can salvage something out of this trip.” He didn’t give up. That night we cruised Cattle Creek again to film the trap sites. It seemed that wherever we went, Steve had an uncanny ability as a wildlife magnet.

It seemed that wherever we went, Steve had an uncanny ability as a wildlife magnet. As we traveled downstream in the boat, he spotted a large carpet python on an overhanging limb. We filmed as Steve held on to the python’s tree limb, keeping the boat steady. He talked about the snake, and how it might have been in that tree to hunt fruit bats. Suddenly the tree lamb snapped, and both the branch and snake crashed down into the boat. Everyone reacted, startled. I had been standing up, and I fell backward into the river. Splashing to the surface would only catch a crocodile’s attention, so I let myself sink and then gradually drift up to the surface again. As my head broke the surface, I could see the boat had drifted off. I can remember looking up from the murky water and seeing the spotlight get smaller and smaller. Don’t panic, I told myself, knowing we were right in front of a baited croc trap. I was trying to tread water without making any splashing or “hurt animal”--type movements that would attract a crocodile. I could feel my heart pounding. It was hard to breathe. I was absolutely fighting the panic. Steve and the film crew were wrangling branch and snake. The boat motor had quit. Steve frantically attempted to start it. I could hear him swearing in the darkness. The crew member holding the spotlight divided his attention between making sure I was okay and helping Steve see what he was doing. The boat continued to drift farther and farther down the river. Just be as motionless as possible, I told myself. I had my teeth clenched in anticipation of feeling a croc’s immense jaw pressure close around my leg. Suddenly I heard the engine roar back to life. Steve swung the boat around and gunned it. As soon as he got to me, he dragged me back in. I felt a little sick. I lay there for a moment, but the drama was not over. Our cameraman was deathly afraid of snakes, and the carpet python was still in the bottom of the boat. Steve scooped it up. The snake decided it didn’t appreciate the whole ordeal. It swung around and proceeded to grab Steve repeatedly on the forearm, bite after bite after bite. Looking back at the footage now, the whole ordeal seems a bit amusing. “Ah! Ah! Ah!” a male voice yells. You think it might be Steve, as he is the one being bitten, but actually it was John Stainton. He cries out in sympathy each time the python sinks its teeth into Steve’s arm. It sounds as though Steve himself is being terribly injured, when in fact the little tiny pinpricks form the carpet python’s hundreds of teeth were only minor wounds. Although the teeth go deep into the flesh and it bleeds quite readily, there was no permanent scarring, no venom, and no infection. “Are you okay, babe?” Steve asked. I told him I was. Shaken, but in one piece. Steve was okay, the python was okay, and even the cameraman seemed to have recovered. We returned the snake to its tree. “We might as well go back to camp,” Steve said, mock-sternly. “Thanks to you, we probably won’t catch that croc tonight. You probably scared the living daylights out of him, landing in the water like that.

After Steve’s death I received letters of condolence from people all over the world. I would like to thank everyone who sent such thoughtful sympathy. Your kind words and support gave me the strength to write this book and so much more. Carolyn Male is one of those dear people who expressed her thoughts and feelings after we lost Steve. It was incredibly touching and special, and I wanted to express my appreciation and gratitude. I’m happy to share it with you. It is with a still-heavy heart that I rise this evening to speak about the life and death of one of the greatest conservationists of our time: Steve Irwin. Many people describe Steve Irwin as a larrikin, inspirational, spontaneous. For me, the best way I can describe Steve Irwin is formidable. He would stand and fight, and was not to be defeated when it came to looking after our environment. When he wanted to get things done--whether that meant his expansion plans for the zoo, providing aid for animals affected by the tsunami and the cyclones, organizing scientific research, or buying land to conserve its environmental and habitat values--he just did it, and woe betide anyone who stood in his way. I am not sure I have ever met anyone else who was so determined to get the conservation message out across the globe, and I believe he achieved his aim. What I admired most about him was that he lived the conservation message every day of his life. Steve’s parents, Bob and Lyn, passed on their love of the Australian bush and their passion for rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife. Steve took their passion and turned it into a worldwide crusade. The founding of Wildlife Warriors Worldwide in 2002 provided Steve and Terri with another vehicle to raise awareness of conservation by allowing individuals to become personally involved in protecting injured, threatened, or endangered wildlife. It also has generated a working fund that helps with the wildlife hospital on the zoo premises and supports work with endangered species in Asia and Africa. Research was always high on Steve’s agenda, and his work has enabled a far greater understanding of crocodile behavior, population, and movement patterns. Working with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the University of Queensland, Steve was an integral part of the world’s first Crocs in Space research program. His work will live on and inform us for many, many years to come. Our hearts go out to his family and the Australia Zoo family. It must be difficult to work at the zoo every day with his larger-than-life persona still very much evident. Everyone must still be waiting for him to walk through the gate. His presence is everywhere, and I hope it lives on in the hearts and minds of generations of wildlife warriors to come. We have lost a great man in Steve Irwin. It is a great loss to the conservation movement. My heart and the hearts of everyone here goes out to his family. Carolyn Male, Member for Glass House, Queensland, Australia October 11, 2006

My day had forty-eight hours. It helped that I had no social life. I recall a poor fellow who asked me out during this period. I agreed to meet him for dinner. As I was getting ready, the phone rang. “We’ve got a possum that’s been hit by a car,” the county animal control office said. “Can you help?” I’ve always liked possums. Like a lot of wildlife, they are completely misunderstood. Virginia opossums are the only North American marsupials. Marsupials tend to have lower body temperatures than other animals, so possums are among the least likely of any mammal to contract rabies. In fact, they are one of the most disease-free animals I’ve dealt with. That evening, answering the call as I dressed for my big date, I didn’t think twice. I thought I could pick it up and still make dinner. But when I got the injured possum home and examined it, I realized that it had probably been hit by the car two or three days earlier, and its body teemed with maggots. There wasn’t any way I could head out for a lovely evening, not with a maggot-infested marsupial under my care. I grabbed my tweezers and began flicking off the fly larvae, one by one. The possum was cooperative, but as the maggot-picking process wore on, it became evident that I was not going to able to make dinner. I called the fellow. “Here’s the situation,” I said. “I am working on a possum that was hit by a car. There is just no way I am going to be on time. What do you want to do?” There was a long hesitation on the other end of the line. “Why don’t I come over and help?” he finally asked. Great! I could always use help. A half hour later, in he came, looking smart and smelling of cologne. His face immediately turned pale as he saw what the project entailed, and he made a halfhearted attempt to help. After a while I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be finishing up with the possum or providing medical aid for my poor date, whose face had now turned a whiter shade of green. He excused himself and headed off into the night, never to be heard from again.

An injured dog, a sick kitten, a horse in labor, it didn't matter... Dell gave his heart and soul, and in less time than it took humans to shake hands, an animal would become part of Dell's pack for life.

Maya can help,” Nicole said when the pilot tried sending me back to my seat. “She knows first aid. She runs a hospital.” “For animals,” Hayley said. Corey told her to shut up, but she had a point. My dad was the local park ranger, and I had a rehabilitation shed for nursing injured animals back to health. I did know first aid, though, and the basics of dealing with a heart attack victim. Step one: call a doctor. Kind of tough, under the circumstances.

Maya can help,” Nicole said when the pilot tried sending me back to my seat. “She knows first aid. She runs a hospital.” “For animals,” Hayley said. Corey told her to shut up, but she had a point. My dad was the local park ranger, and I had a rehabilitation shed for nursing injured animals back to health. I did know first aid, though, and the basics of dealing with a heart attack victim. Step one: call a doctor. Kind of tough, under the circumstances. Step two: give the victim an aspirin. That wouldn’t work while he was unconscious. But why was he unconscious? I remembered fainting as one of the signs, but not sustained lack of consciousness. We had to get him to a doctor and, until then, I could only presume it was heart failure and perform CPR if he stopped breathing. I unbuttoned the mayor’s shirt. When Nicole inched forward, the pilot snapped at her, and Corey told him to go to hell, which really didn’t help matters.

The pack heard Oscars call, Kojac felt the urgency in his howl. Their territory had been breeched, he led the pack back to Toni’s. Retribution would be swift and the danger would be eliminated. Even though they were a mismatch of lone and injured wolves brought together by Toni, Kojac knew it was theirs to protect.

I envelop her. Even when Daria is growling like an injured animal in my ear. Even when the sea glass necklace, her see glass necklace, burns a hole in my back pocket, right next to her pompom string, demanding to go back to its rightful owner. Even when a scream rips from her throat, and I need to cover it with my palm. I hold her.

Then he leans me against the wall with the weight of his body, and because he isn’t a fucking saint, he kisses me. Jack O’Mara dips his head and kisses me in the snow, his lips trembling and then hot and sure, and I’m crying and kissing him back, opening my mouth to let his tongue slide over mine as he makes this low, injured animal noise in his throat.

see this before. It is the way of nature. We are like an injured animal.” He made a gesture with his hand slitting his throat. “Other animals will see that and hunt us.

Three crows, two zebras, one whale, a handful of ladybugs, one unicorn with metallic wings, three horses—one pink, one green, one realistically colored—two butterflies, three bears including the one we got free with a wiper blade change, a dolphin from the aquarium class trip we lied to go to, convincing my mother she signed the permission slip while she dozed on the recliner after my brother made us a simple meal. Finally, four parakeets arranged up front, who were the young Luna’s—my—favorites. Place the walrus next to the puppy. The raccoon comes after the bear. The hush of human voices on the other side of the curtain, amplified and immediate. I had prepared for cruelty but not for this tender thought: Tom has returned my animals to me. They will never be out of order again. The Man from the Coffee Shop enters and every conciliatory sentiment fades. Tom’s gotten it wrong again. When the man entered in real life, no one noticed. There is no memory in a play. A play is always present tense. I am newly injured in real time.

The traditional illustration of the direct rule-based approach is the “three laws of robotics” concept, formulated by science fiction author Isaac Asimov in a short story published in 1942.22 The three laws were: (1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Embarrassingly for our species, Asimov’s laws remained state-of-the-art for over half a century: this despite obvious problems with the approach, some of which are explored in Asimov’s own writings (Asimov probably having formulated the laws in the first place precisely so that they would fail in interesting ways, providing fertile plot complications for his stories).23 Bertrand Russell, who spent many years working on the foundations of mathematics, once remarked that “everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.”24 Russell’s dictum applies in spades to the direct specification approach. Consider, for example, how one might explicate Asimov’s first law. Does it mean that the robot should minimize the probability of any human being coming to harm? In that case the other laws become otiose since it is always possible for the AI to take some action that would have at least some microscopic effect on the probability of a human being coming to harm. How is the robot to balance a large risk of a few humans coming to harm versus a small risk of many humans being harmed? How do we define “harm” anyway? How should the harm of physical pain be weighed against the harm of architectural ugliness or social injustice? Is a sadist harmed if he is prevented from tormenting his victim? How do we define “human being”? Why is no consideration given to other morally considerable beings, such as sentient nonhuman animals and digital minds? The more one ponders, the more the questions proliferate. Perhaps

And it is miserable to think that this is what adulthood is like: two people, cowering behind their grief, lashing out at each other like injured animals.

Charles, a footman who had once worked on his father's farm and who loved animals, appeared and came over to help her prepare dishes of boiled chicken and brown rice for the cats and dogs waiting eagerly at their feet. When guests were staying, Charles often assisted with the care of her furry brood. Without asking, he set to work, even taking a few moments to gather fresh meat scraps for Aeolus, her wounded hawk, and cut-up apple and beetroots for Poppy, a convalescing rabbit who had an injured leg. He gave her several more apple quarters for the horses, who got jealous if she didn't bring them treats as well. Once all her cats and dogs were fed, Esme set off for the stables, laden pail in hand, Burr trotting at her heels. She stopped along the way to chat with the gardener and his assistant, who gave her some timothy grass, comfrey and lavender to supplement the hay she regularly fed Poppy.

She’s not mean. She’s just hurt. An animal that’s gentle and friendly growls when it’s injured. Remember that when people act ugly toward you. They’re usually in some kind of pain.

The beat of things, their steady direction, had dissolved into nothing–this room wasn't happening then, it isn't happening now; maybe it's a dream of what's going to happen or what will happen never. The sound of her own voice injures her like a shock of electricity through her ears, but screaming herself to hoarse exhaustion is the only reprieve from breathing. She looked up out of her voice and saw the angel. He will have ears like a cartoon of organic growth. He is yellow with light but covered with mobile shadows, animated tattoos. His face kept changing. His voice will come from far off, like a train's. His body is steady and beautiful and hairless, the wings white, incinerating, and pure, but the head changes rapidly–the head of an eagle, a goat, an insect, a mouse, a sheep with spiraling horns that turn and lengthen almost imperceptibly–and the entire message had no words. The entire message will be only the beat and direction of time. Yes is Now. The angel who says "It's time." "Is it time?" she asked. "Does it hurt?" He will have the most beautiful face she has ever seen. "Oh babe." The angel starts to cry. "You can't imagine," he said.

You body was the only one that was perfect. I was so close, with you, but growing a human is harder than growing an animal. With Pain I didn’t uncover the tank, and with Shame I let light in too soon. Justice’s bones were not fully grown when I assembled her because I just couldn’t wait to pick. She made me feel so…guilty; and I couldn’t wait for the perfect thighbone, so she limped. It took a few years to figure out what I’d done that blinded you, but it was too much air in the mix. It injured your eyes in some way.” Pride opened and closed her mouth, turned her head away. “It doesn’t mean much to you, I’m sure, but I am sorry.” Pride managed a brittle smile. “While it is utterly unacceptable that you would put any of us out into bodies that you wouldn’t want for yourself, I neither need not want your apology. I do not find my lack of sight such a great disadvantage.

The Pawed Angels, a group of pets that help other animals in difficulties when they get injured in an accident, are in a bad situation or are unhappy in their homes, and need a new one.

Imagine if your entire body became delicate to the touch whenever you stubbed your toe: That’s a squid’s reality. “When they’re injured, their whole body becomes hypersensitive,” Crook tells me. “They go from being normal to this potential world of pain.” This might explain why they don’t groom their wounds. They can sense that they’ve been hurt, but they might not be able to tell where.

Octopuses are different. Unlike squid, they can touch every part of their bodies. They can even reach inside themselves to groom their own gills—the equivalent of a human putting a hand down their throat to scratch their lungs. And unlike squid, which are stuck in open-water groups and can’t take a day off, octopuses can hole up in solitary dens until they feel better. Since they have the time and dexterity to tend to their injuries, it would make sense for them to know where their wounds are. And as Crook showed, they do. Octopuses will sometimes break off an arm if its tip is injured. When that happens, the stump will be more sensitive than the arms around it, and octopuses will cradle that stump in their beaks. In her latest study, published in 2021, Crook found that octopuses will avoid places where they’ve been injected with acetic acid, but gravitate to places where they receive painkillers. And once they’re injected with local anesthetic, they stop grooming their injured arms. In her latest paper, Crook is unambiguous: “Octopuses are capable of experiencing pain.

Four facts about angels. 1. Angels are indestructible. An angel can only be injured by another angel. 2. Angels are animals not spirits. (The separation of the spiritual and mundane, and the notion that angels are spirits, only dates back to the Lateran Council of 1215.) Angels are warm-blooded animals, but have no oesophagus, duodenum, stomach, small or large intestine, no anus, no need to eat, and no genitals. (Except for the one angel who is a copy of a particular human being—though since God added wings He might have considered subtracting other appendages as a matter of balance.) 3. Fallen angels are not demons. 4. God made angels. Angels are, broadly speaking, copies of humans, whom God did not make.

Four facts about angels. 1. Angels are indestructible. An angel can only be injured by another angel. 2. Angels are animals not spirits. (The separation of the spiritual and mundane, and the notion that angels are spirits, only dates back to the Lateran Council of 1215.) Angels are warm-blooded animals, but have no oesophagus, duodenum, stomach, small or large intestine, no anus, no need to eat, and no genitals. (Except for the one angel who is a copy of a particular human being—though since God added wings He might have considered subtracting other appendages as a matter of balance.)

She had no desire to see Conall dead. She loved him. That was a thought that caught her by surprise. Claray had liked Conall from the start, admired his sense of honor and determination to look after his people. She also appreciated all he had done for her, rescuing her from Kerr, carrying her before him on his mount while she slept, no matter that he was exhausted. He'd also been most patient with her rescuing animals at every turn on the way home to MacFarlane when she'd known he hadn't wanted her to. He was a good man----he worked day and night here to build a home for them all, and he'd tended to her when she was injured and ill with such gentleness and kindness. And then there was his loving. Aye, at first Claray had worried that her soul might be in peril because of the pleasure he gave her, but she'd come to terms with that. It was just too beautiful and intimate to be something God would begrudge them. Surely, if He hadn't wanted them to enjoy each other like that, He wouldn't have made it possible for people to enjoy it as they did. At least that was her reasoning. Perhaps it was just a justification to allow her to continue to enjoy her marital bed without guilt, but since she found it impossible not to, she was happy to accept that justification. Whatever the case, with all that she admired, respected and enjoyed about her husband, Claray supposed it would be surprising if she did not love him. Conall was a man worth loving, and she simply could not bear the thought of this man ending his life.

Ultra running isn’t a mystery—it’s hard work and human nature. I believe anyone can do it. If it’s in you, if you want it, you can do it. You can run 30 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles. You don’t have to look like a runner—anyone can be a runner. You don’t have to be fast, you don’t have to know anything. You just have to start small and break it down. You will be afraid. You’ll worry about wild animals and strangers and getting injured and losing everything. This is natural. This is resistance. You’re stronger than you think you are. Keep going.

It turned out that the water was for the stag to drink when Till held it up for him. The continued care went right to Ramsey’s heart. He put his hand on his chest as he watched Till touch the stag’s back like it hurt him to see the animal injured. Till was an honestly beautiful soul.

Then Cassian screamed. I looked toward him. Away from my father. Not twenty feet away, Cassian was on the ground. Wings- snapped in spots. Blood leaking from them. Bone jutted from his thigh. His siphons were dull. Empty. He'd already drained them before coming here. Was exhausted. But he had come- for her. For us. He was panting, blood dribbling from his nose. Arms buckling as he tried to rise. The King of Hybern stood over him, and extended a hand. Cassian arched off the ground, bellowing in pain. A bone cracked somewhere in his body. 'Stop.' The King looked over a shoulder as Nesta stepped forward. Cassian mouthed for her to run, blood escaping from his lips and onto the moss beneath him. Nesta took in his broken body, the pain in Cassian's eyes, and angled her head. The movement was not human. Not Fae. Purely animal. Purely predator. And when her eyes lifted to the king again... 'I am going to kill you.

Mais il faut le voir à table comme il la regarde quand elle brille, ses yeux d'animal subjugué. D'où vient-elle donc cette créature ? Pr les mots dans sa bouche, ces idées qui lui passent par la cervelle, son insatisfaction tout le temps, son intraitable enthousiasme, ce désir d'aller voir ailleurs, de marquer les distances, cet élan qui frise l'injure parfois? Ou va-t-elle chercher tout ça ? Alors, quand leur fille a besoin de sous pour un voyage de classe ou acheter des livres, Mireille et Jean ne rechignent pas. Ils raquent. Ils font ce qu'il faut. C'est leur terrible métier de parents, donner à cette gamine les moyens de son évasion. On a si peu de raison de se réjouir dans ces endroits qui n’ont ni la mère ni la Tour Eiffel, ou dieu est mort comme partout où la soirée s’achèvent à 20 heures en semaine et dans les talus le week-end Car elle et Jeannot savent qu'ils ne peuvent plus grand-chose pour elle. Ils font comme si, mais ils ne sont plus en mesure de faire des choix à sa place. Ils en sont réduits ça, faire confiance, croiser les doigts, espérer quils l'ont élevée comme il faut et que ça suffira. L'adolescence est un assassinat prémédité de longue date et le cadavre de leur famille telle qu'elle fut git déjà sur le bord du chemin. Il faut désormais réinventer des rôles, admettre des distances nouvelles, composer avec les monstruosités et les ruades. Le corps est encore chaud. Il tressaille. Mais ce qui existait, l'enfance et ses tendresses évidentes, le règne indiscuté des adultes et la gamine pile au centre, le cocon et la ouate, les vacances à La Grande-Motte et les dimanches entre soi, tout cela vient de crever. On n'y reviendra plus. Et puis il aimait bien aller à l'hôtel, dont elle réglait toujours la note. Il appréciait la simplicité des surfaces, le souci ergonome partout, la distance minime entre le lit et la douche, l'extrême propreté des serviettes de bain, le sol neutre et le téléviseur suspendu, les gobelets sous plastique, le cliquetis précis de l'huisserie quand la porte se refermait lourdement sur eux, le code wifi précisé sur un petit carton à côté de la bouilloire, tout ce confort limité mais invariable. À ses yeux, ces chambres interchangeables n'avaient rien d'anonyme. Il y retrouvait au contraire un territoire ami, elle se disait ouais, les mecs de son espèce n'ont pas de répit, soumis au travail, paumés dans leurs familles recomposées, sans même assez de thune pour se faire plaisir, devenus les cons du monde entier, avec leur goût du foot, des grosses bagnoles et des gros culs. Après des siècles de règne relatif, ces pauvres types semblaient bien gênés aux entournures tout à coup dans ce monde qu'ils avaient jadis cru taillé à leur mesure. Leur nombre ne faisait rien à l'affaire. Ils se sentaient acculés, passés de mode, foncièrement inadéquats, insultés par l'époque. Des hommes élevés comme des hommes, basiques et fêlés, une survivance au fond. Toute la journée il dirigeait 20 personnes, gérait des centaines de milliers d'euros, alors quand il fallait rentrer à la maison et demander cent fois à Mouche de ranger ses chaussettes, il se sentait un peu sous employé. Effectivement. Ils burent un pinot noir d'Alsace qui les dérida et, dans la chaleur temporaire d'une veille d'enterrement, se retrouvèrent. - T'aurais pu venir plus tôt, dit Gérard, après avoir mis les assiettes dans le lave-vaisselle. Julien, qui avait un peu trop bu, se contenta d'un mouvement vague, sa tête dodelinant d'une épaule à l'autre. C'était une concession bien suffisante et le père ne poussa pas plus loin son avantage. Pour motiver son petit frère, Julien a l'idée d'un entraînement spécial, qui débute par un lavage de cerveau en règle. Au programme, Rocky, Les Chariots de feu, Karaté Kid, et La Castagne, tout y passe. À chaque fois, c'est plus ou moins la même chose : des acteurs torse nu et des séquences d'entraînement qui transforment de parfaits losers en machines à gagner.

Outside the wind rushed through the mountains, and thunder cracked. The dark clouds burst, and rain pelted down in sheets. Out of the trees loped a huge black wolf with pale, burning eyes. As he approached the small porch, the powerful body contorted, stretched, shape-shifted into a heavily muscled man with wide shoulders, long dark hair, and slashing silver eyes. He stepped onto the porch out of the pouring rain and regarded the two men facing him. The tension was tangible between Mikhail and Byron. Mikhail, as always, was inscrutable. Byron looked like a thundercloud. The newcomer’s eyebrows went up, and he leaned close to Byron. “The last time someone got Mikhail seriously angry, it was not a pretty sight. I do not wish to attempt to replace major organs in your body, so go take a walk and cool off.” The voice was beautiful, with a singsong cadence--compelling, soothing even, yet it clearly commanded. It was a voice so hypnotic, so mesmerizing, even those of their kind were drawn into its power. Gregori. The dark one. Ancient, powerful, instrument of justice. He dismissed Byron by simply turning his back and addressing Mikhail. “When you sent the call, you said it was Jacques, yet I cannot detect him. I have tried to touch him, but there is only emptiness.” “It is Jacques, yet he is not the same. Not turned, but he has been severely injured. He does not recognize us, and he is extremely dangerous. I cannot restrain him without further injuring him.” “He fought you?” The voice, as always, was mild, even gentle. “Absolutely, and he would again. He is more wild animal than man, and there is no reaching him. He will kill us if he can find the strength.” Gregori inhaled the wild night air. “Who is this woman?” “She is Carpathian, but she does not know our ways or respond in any way to our normal means of communication. She seems trained in the human practice of healing.” “A doctor?” “Perhaps. He protects her, yet he is abusive, as if he cannot separate right from wrong. I think he is trapped in a world of madness.

Historically, wolf trappers staked traps in the earth so that a trapped animal was stuck at a single location. This made it easier for the trapper to find his quarry, but it caused a great deal of stress for the animal. Stake-trapped animals often struggle so violently against the metal clinching their legs that they severely injure themselves. By not staking their traps, and by adding features like a drag with a coil spring and swivel - which reduces the strain from the pointed prongs when it’s being dragged - the red wolf program allows a trapped animal to continue moving and to seek refuge. In theory, this makes the trapping experience less stressful, both physically and mentally, for the animals. It can also make them harder to locate. “Please take it off,” I blurted. The sight of the metal trap biting Ryan’s hand shot adrenaline up and down my spine. Even though he claimed it didn’t hurt, I still expected geysers of blood to spout at any second. Ryan paused, clearly taken aback. Then he grinned like a jester and doubled over in laughter at me. When he freed himself and slipped off the glove, a faint purple pressure mark wrapped around his fingers. He often demonstrated this to groups sans glove.

The world is supposed to make sense. We want and need the things that happen to us and to those around us to adhere to laws of order and justice and reason. We want to believe that if we live wisely and follow the rules, things will work out, more or less, for us and for those we love. Psychologists refer to this as the Just World Hypothesis, a theory first developed by the social psychologist Melvin Lerner. Lerner postulated that people have a powerful intuition that individuals get what they deserve. This intuition influences how we judge those who suffer. When a person is harmed, we instinctually look for a reason or a justification. Unfortunately, this instinct leads to victim-blaming. As Oliver Burkeman writes in The Guardian, “Faced with evidence of injustice, we’ll certainly try to alleviate it if we can—but, if we feel powerless to make things right, we’ll do the next best thing, psychologically speaking: we’ll convince ourselves that the world isn’t so unjust after all.” Burkeman cites as evidence a 2009 study finding that Holocaust memorials can increase anti-Semitism: “Confronted with an atrocity they otherwise can’t explain, people become slightly more likely, on average, to believe that the victims must have brought it on themselves.” So what happens when the victim is a child, a little boy walking to school, a little girl riding her bike, a baby in a car, victims impossible to blame? Whom can we hold accountable when a child is killed or injured or abused or forgotten? How can one take in this information, the horror of it, and keep on believing the world is just? In his history of childhood in America, the historian Steven Mintz defines a “moral panic” as the term used by sociologists to describe “the highly exaggerated and misplaced public fears that periodically arise within a society.” Mintz suggests that “eras of ethical conflict and confusion are especially prone to outbreaks of moral panic as particular incidents crystallize generalized anxieties and provoke moral crusades.” The late 1970s through the early 1990s was a period in American history rife with sources of ethical conflict and confusion.

So there it is, in black and white. The extremist ideology referenced by Sodini, Rodger, and Harper-Mercer does not qualify them to be included in the national government database of extremist crimes. In spite of the fact that these three men alone, explicitly acting in the name of violent misogynistic extremism, killed eighteen people and injured thirty-one more. Meanwhile, animal rights and environmental extremist ideologies are considered serious enough to be included, despite no killings in the name of these belief systems being carried out during the same period.

Leviticus thus is a design for an organized society of people who help one another, who do not intentionally injure one another, who respect one another's property and relationships, who regularly assemble to celebrate together, who acknowledge their errors and atone for them, who regard life—in humans and in animals—as sacred, who pursue purity in various forms, who respect law, and who are utterly loyal to one God.

Those who are unreal have, in a sense, already suffered the violence of derealization. What, then, is the relation between violence and those lives considered as "unreal"? Does violence effect that unreality? Does violence take place on the condition of that unreality? If violence is done against those who are unreal, then, from the perspective of violence, it fails to injure or negate those lives since those lives are already negated. But they have a strange way of remaining animated and so must be negated again (and again). They cannot be mourned because they are always already lost or, rather, never "were," and they must be killed, since they seem to live on, stubbornly, in this state of deadness. Violence renews itself in the face of the apparent inexhaustibility of its object.

The dolphins spent far more time near the mirror, inspecting their reflection, when they had been visibly marked than when they had been sham marked. They seemed to recognize that the mark they saw in the mirror had been put on their own body. Since they hardly paid any attention to marks on other dolphins, it was not as if they were obsessed with marks in general. They were specifically interested in the ones on themselves. Critics complained that the dolphins in this study failed to touch their own body. or rub off the mark, as humans or apes do, but I’m not sure we should hold the absence of self-touching against an animal that lacks the anatomy for it. Until better tests have been designed, it seems safe to let dolphins join the cognitive elite of animals that recognize themselves in a mirror. Dolphins possess large brains (larger than humans, in fact), and show every sign of high intelligence. Each individual produces its own unique whistle sound by which the others recognize him or her, and there are even indications that they use these sounds to call each other “by name,” so to speak. They enjoy lifelong bonds, and reconcile after fights by means of sexy petting (much like bonobos), while males form power-seeking coalitions. They may encircle a school of herring to drive them together in a compact ball, releasing bubbles to keep them in place, after which they pick their food like fruit from a tree. With regard to the co-emergence hypothesis, it is important to note the level of dolphin altruism. Does self-awareness go hand in hand with perspective-taking, and do dolphins show the sort of targeted helping known of humans and apes? One of the oldest reports in the scientific literature concerns an incident on October 30, 1954, off the coast of Florida. During a capture expedition for a public aquarium, a stick of dynamite was set off underwater near a pod of bottlenose dolphins. As soon as one stunned victim surfaced, heavily listing, two other dolphins came to its aid: “One came up from below on each side, and placing the upper lateral part of their heads approximately beneath the pectoral fins of the injured one, they buoyed it to the surface in an apparent effort to allow it to breathe while it remained partially stunned.” The two helpers were submerged, which meant that they couldn’t breathe during their effort. The entire pod remained nearby (whereas normally they’d take off immediately after an explosion), and waited until their companion had recovered. They then all fled in a hurry, making tremendous leaps. The scientists reporting this incident added: “There is no doubt in our minds that the cooperative assistance displayed for their own species was real and deliberate.

Meanwhile, the conquest of the Great Plains had enabled ranchers to breed massive herds of cattle, without a corresponding population base of humans to feed. You could ship live cattle by train to the eastern states to be slaughtered locally, but transporting entire cows was expensive, and the animals were often malnourished or even injured en route. Almost half would be inedible by the time they arrived in New York or in Boston.

He swallowed hard, and stared into the corner. “I never wanted you to see me like that. When a man faces death, he meets the animal lurking inside him. When it’s hand to hand, blade to blade, kill or be killed . . .” Defiant green eyes met hers, and he slapped a hand to his scar. “The man who did this to me— I killed him. With his bayonet stuck in my flesh, I reached out and grabbed him by the throat and watched his eyes bulge from his skull as he suffocated at my hand.” She would not react, Cecily told herself, calmly dabbing at his wound. That’s what he expected, what he feared— her reaction of revulsion or disgust. “And he wasn’t the only one,” he continued. “To learn what violence you’re truly capable of, in those moments . . . It’s a burden I’d not wish on anyone.” She risked a glance at him then. “Burdens are lighter when they’re shared.” Luke swore. “I’ve shared too much of it with you already. I can’t believe I’m telling you this.” “You can tell me anything. I’ll still love you. And I warn you, I’ve learned something of tenacity in the past four years. I’m not going to let you go.” He shook his head. “You don’t understand. Sometimes, I scarcely feel human anymore. The brutal way I took down that boar, Cecily. That barbarism with the stocking . . .” “Ah, yes.” She put aside her handkerchief and stood. “The stocking.” She propped one boot on the stool and slowly rucked up her skirts to reveal her stocking-clad leg. “Cecy . . .” “Yes, Luke?” She leaned over to untie the laces of her boot, giving him an eyeful of her décolletage. He groaned. “Cecy, what are you doing?” “Tending to your wounds,” she said, slipping the boot from her foot. With sure fingers, she unknotted the ribbon garter at her thigh, then eased the stocking down her leg. “Making it better.” Skirts still hiked thigh-high, she straddled his legs and nestled on his lap. “Shh.” She quieted his objection, then deftly wound the length of flannel around his injured arm, tucking in the end to secure it. “There,” she said in a husky voice, lowering her lips to the underside of his wrist. “All better.” “I wasn’t after your damn stocking,” he blurted out. “When I took you to the ground last night and pushed up your skirts. By all that’s holy, I wanted—” With a muttered oath, he gripped her by the shoulders, hauling her further into his lap. Until she felt the hard ridge of his arousal, pressing insistently against her cleft. “Cecily, what I want from you is not tender. It’s not romantic in the least. It’s plunder. It’s possession. If you had the least bit of sense, you’d turn and run from—” She kissed him hard, raking his back with her fingernails and clutching his thighs between hers like a vise. Boldly, she sucked his lower lip into her mouth and gave it a sharp nip, savoring his startled moan. Wriggling backward, she placed her hands over his, dragging them downward and molding his fingers around her breasts. “For God’s sake, Luke. You’re not the only one with animal urges.” He took her mouth, growling against her lips as he did.

Later, some kind of animal—Gloyd described it to him as a six-legged mammal, half mouth—vaulted from a burrow and tore into one of the injured. It took five exhausted sentries to slay the beast. One of Devore’s mining specialists cast a chunk of the creature’s body into the campfire and sampled a piece. She vomited blood and died within heartbeats.

As for Beatrix, there was doubt as to whether she would marry at all. She was only half-civilized, spending most of her time out-of-doors, riding or rambling through the woodlands, marsh, and meadows of Hampshire. Beatrix preferred the company of animals to people, collecting injured and orphaned creatures and rehabilitating them. The creatures that couldn't survive on their own in the wild were kept as pets, and Beatrix occupied herself with caring for them. Out-of-doors, she was happy and fulfilled. Indoors, life was not nearly so perfect.

Office and Classroom Tools—Have the child cut with scissors; use a stapler and hole puncher; draw with crayons and chalk; paint with brushes, feathers, sticks, and eyedroppers; squeeze glue onto paper in letters or designs, sprinkle sparkles on the glue, and shake off the excess; and wrap boxes with brown paper, tape, and string. MOTOR PLANNING Jumping from a Table—Place a gym mat beside a low table and encourage the child to jump. After each landing, stick tape on the mat to mark the spot. Encourage the child to jump farther each time. Walking Like Animals—Encourage the child to lumber like a bear, on all fours; a crab, from side to side on all fours; a turtle, creeping; a snake, crawling; an inchworm, by stretching flat and pulling her knees toward her chest; an ostrich, while grasping her ankles; a duck, squatting; a frog, squatting and jumping; a kangaroo or bunny, jumping; a lame dog, with an “injured” leg; a gorilla, bending her knees; a horse, galloping. Playground Games—Remember Simon Says, Ring-Around-the-Rosy, The Hokey-Pokey, London Bridge, Shoo Fly, and Mother, May I? Insy-Outsy—Teach the child to get in and out of clothes, the front door, and the car. With a little help, the child may become able to perform these tasks independently, even if it takes a long time!

Hi. My name is Sue. Have some Gu, Let me put this under you. IF you ask anyone who has ever taken a wilderness medicine course from me, this is how they remember me. This is what we say to someone we find injured or lost in the backcountry. Introduce yourself, add sugars and insulation to the patient.

Schweitzer argues is each creature’s inherent right to life without being injured or impeded by us, except in cases of absolute need: “We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.

Fitz was on his best behavior with Daniel, though. He usually is. He can sense Daniel likes animals. That’s how we met. A week after we moved in, Daniel brought us an injured squirrel. The old warden had taken in wounded animals, and Daniel had figured that was part of the job. As for what a five-year-old was doing riding his bike deep into a predator-laced forest, well, that says something about the level of parental care in the Bianchi household.

Of all people, of all men, I learned to trust Joshua North. He’s a self proclaimed bastard, an injured animal biting anyone who comes close. Auribus teneo lupum. I have this particular wolf by the ears, which means I’m going to get bitten—and I’m choosing not to let go.

you filmed that, an injured or sick animal that crept away to hide, died and rotted, and then ran that film backwards, the soil would pull apart to become an animal that rose up and slunk away. If you could do the same with the forest itself, the soil would pull apart everywhere, as if under a bombardment, and animals would rise up and slink away wherever you looked.

It had been a simpler time, when she could run carefree around the bailey, pretending to slay dragons and capture magical wisps. A time when she did not have to worry about betrothals, peace alliances, or any of the other duties she was now being forced to contend with as princess. But she would not have to worry about these duties for long. After Merida taught her how to survive the journey to Northumbria, she would have the freedom to study the region's fascinating artwork and listen to the poets who recited sonnets day in and day out. The freedom to spend her mornings tending to lost or injured animals, and her evenings singing folk songs with all the like-minded new friends she would meet.

I dreamed of you once,” I said suddenly. I had not been planning to say the words. He opened one cat-yellow eye. “I think we had this conversation before. A long time ago.” “No. This is different. I didn’t know it was you until just now. Or maybe I did.” It had been a restless night, years ago, and when I awakened the dream had cling to my mind like pitch on my hands. I had known it was significant, and yet the snatch of what I had seen had made so little sense, I could not grasp its significance. “I didn’t know you had gone golden, you see. But now, when you leaned back with your eyes closed…You—or someone—were lying on a rough wooden floor. Your eyes were closed; you were sick or injured. A man leaned over you. I felt he wanted to hurt you. So I…” I had repelled at him, using the Wit in a way I had not for years. A rough thrust of animal presence to shove him away, to express dominance of him in a way he could not understand, yet hated. The hatred was proportionate to his fear. The Fool was silent, waiting for me. “I pushed him away from you. He was angry, hating you, wanting to hurt you. But I pressed on his mind that he had to go and fetch help for you. He had to tell someone you needed help. He resented what I did to him, but he had to obey me.” “Because you Skill-burned it into him,” the Fool said quietly. “Perhaps,” I admitted unwillingly. Certainly, the next day had been one long torment of headache and Skill-hunger. The thought made me uneasy. I had been telling myself that I could not Skill that way. Certain other dreams stirred uneasily in my memories. I pushed them down again. No, I promised myself. They were not the same. “It was the deck of a ship,” he said quietly. “And it’s quite likely you saved my life.” He took a breath. “I thought something like that might have happened. It never made sense to me that he didn’t get rid of me when he could have. Sometimes, when I was most alone, I mocked myself that I could cling to such hope. That I could believe I was so important to anyone that he would travel in his dreams to protect me.” “You should have known better than that,” I said quietly. “Should I?” The question was almost a challenge. He gave me the most direct look I had ever received from him. I did not understand the hurt I saw in his eyes, not the hope. He needed something from me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I tried to find something to say, but before I could, the moment seemed to pass. He looked away from me, releasing me from his plea. When his eyes came back to mine, he changed both his expression and the subject.

The members were forbidden to kill any animal that does not injure man, or to destroy a cultivated tree. They were to dress simply and behave modestly, “never yielding to laughter, and yet not looking stern.” They were not to swear by the gods, for “every man ought so to live as to be worthy of belief without an oath.” They were not to offer victims in sacrifice, but they might worship at altars that were unstained with blood. At the close of each day they were to ask themselves what wrongs they had committed, what duties they had neglected, what good they had done.