Today at the gas station the attendent told me, "They'll never be able to enforce it," referring to the ban on fox hunting being discussed on the radio. "Sure they will," I snapped. "I'll help them. Gladly," I added, with a glare for good measure. He gave me a cautious look. Another American who doesn't understand bloodsport.
Maybe it's the American in me, that sees the faults of another country more clearly than its natives. Or maybe it's the vegetarian in me, that sees the plight of animals and protests. But I like to think it's the human in me, that sees the cruel practice of fox hunting and cries "Enough."
I've had it up to here listening to complaints from proponents of fox hunting about the new ban, a mirror of the one that went into effect in Scotland two years ago. I'm sick to death of hearing the Countryside Alliance threaten civil disobedience in defiance of the ban, and claim their human rights have been violated. I'm disgusted by people who claim the government has no right to ban a sport enjoyed for hundreds of years--a fine, old tradition. (This, in a country that "traditionally" chopped off heads.)
Inhumanity doesn't deserve the protection of tradition.
Let's examine this "sport" in which a pack of dogs run down a fox, for sometimes hours. (Faster dogs could be used, were the object merely pest control, instead of human entertainment.) There are approximately 200 official hunt groups, which kill an estimated 13,000 foxes and 6000 fox cubs a year--numbers insignificant to the total number of foxes, belying the argument that fox hunting is effective pest control. (Nor are foxes the pests of myths: a negligible number of lambs are killed by foxes; foxes, however, keep mice and moles under control.)
The night before a hunt, any fox holes are filled, so that the fox, her natural instinct to go to ground, cannot hide. She runs and runs, finding no safe harbor, until exhausted, she gives up, and is torn apart by a pack of hounds. (Proponents claim she's killed by one quick bite to the neck, but autopsies show this is rarely the case. More often, her guts are ripped out, her limbs torn apart, and she dies an agonizing death.) Even if she's lucky enough to escape, chances are she'll die soon after from the stress of being chased for hours. (Foxes are predators themselves, therefore not accustomed to being chased. Often their hearts burst from the adrenaline created by a life or death flight.)
Not only are foxes killed, but many dogs and horses are injured, sometimes fatally, during hunts:
Link: Fox Hunting.
One hound is shrieking in pain because he jumped onto a barbed-wire fence and can't get off. "Just about every day a hunt goes out, one of its dogs will cut his pads or tail badly on barbed wire," said Paul Gammon, press officer for the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HAS), which has witnessed and tried to save Foxes lives at tens of thousands of hunts since 1962. "When hounds chase foxes, they ignore everything else." Sometimes hounds get bloodied from brambles or broken glass. About once a season, one hound in each hunt pack will fall to his death chasing a fox to the edge of a 100-foot quarry, Gammon reported. "Hundreds of hounds have run into trains and cars and been killed," added Stewart. One train crushed eleven hounds at once.
Will our shrieking hound get help for his cuts? Maybe not. "Generally, if dogs are so injured that they can't hunt, hunters choose to shoot them rather than have a vet rehabilitate them," claimed Stewart, who has seen hunters report this in publications.
When a hound can no longer keep up with the pack, at around age six or seven, it's killed. Though the RSPCA claims they can find homes for the dogs put out of work by the ban, huntsmen say they'll put the dogs down, anyway, because "they wouldn't be happy in private homes away from the pack and without all the exercise." The British have a good word for this: Rubbish!
But they're just foxes, some say. It's not like they're pets! Turns out foxes share many of the same social abilities our dogs do. There's a fine line between animals that are pets, and animals that aren't, but there's no line at all between those that feel pain and those that don't.
They say this is about town vs. country, toffs vs. working men. Sportsmen vs. pansy animal rights activists. "The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable," was how Oscar
Wilde described fox hunting, implying the struggle is about class warfare, not animal welfare.
That's where it's handy to be an American, without any British notions of class.
Because cruelty is wrong, no matter which continent it's practiced on.
