There are a number of massacres going on, right now, at this holy time of year. Here is one you might not know about. It’s a scourge I thought had ended roughly 20 years ago: decades ago we saw horrific images of baby harp seals in Canada being clubbed by men who wanted their clean white skins for pelts. The world gasped. The hunt was ended. Or so we thought.
As you read this, there is a massive slaughter going on in Quebec. Men wielding clubs roam the ice, either in snowmobiles or on foot. They walk up to baby seals–tiny white animals who aren’t even weaned yet–and they club them in the head, brutally, blood spurting onto the ice. Some don’t die immediately. Some convulse. Twenty years ago, many of these baby seals were skinned while still alive. Canada says that doesn’t happen anymore. Apparently, that’s supposed to make it OK.
You should know–because there are so many other stories in the news right now that take up our time and pull on our hearts–that Canada has raised the quota for the hunting of baby seals to levels higher than they have been in the last 50 years. The government will allow the killing–the clubbing–of 350,000 baby harp seals, more than one in three. And it is only for their pelts. No food, no sustenance, just pelts.
You should know that the babies killed are less than one month old–incapable of escape or self defense. They can’t swim yet; they don’t even eat solid food. They just lie there on the ice–tiny and white and new–as men with clubs come to bash their skulls in.
In this holy, reverential time of year–when we think about miracles and freedom and resurrection–I wonder what kind of person can stride across a sheet of frozen ice, raise a club over a baby animal and crash that club down on its skull … simply to get money for its skin.
And I wonder what kind of person buys such a pelt when it’s fashioned into a hat or some other article of clothing. Does that person ever consider what happened out there on that ice?
Who are we if we don’t see the link between cruelty to other species and cruelty within our own? If we don’t flinch at barbarism in any form, then we become barbaric.
Will we have enough strength, enough compassion, to stop another slaughter on the ice floes of Quebec? Or will this turn out to be fortunate timing for the Canadians who want to score as many pelts as they can? We are preoccupied now. There is a war going on. There is a lot of death. Maybe they think we won’t have time to care about animals who can’t speak up, who just die quietly in a stream of frozen blood.
The miracle of this time of year should start first in our hearts. Hearts don’t have limits. If we care about the smallest creatures, we care about all creatures. If we stop cruelty anywhere, we slow it down everywhere. The Red Sea parted. A man rose from the dead. It doesn’t seem too difficult to raise our voices loudly enough that men who stride across Canada’s frozen lakes to kill might be overpowered, might lower their clubs and walk away.
