Nature Shows

I used to love watching nature shows on TV. Not The Crocodile Hunter, although I enjoyed Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom as a kid, but video footage of animals with the only noticeable human presence being the narrator's voice over. The crueler the better. The high point came when I saw an episode of The Trials of Life, narrated by David Attenborough, that made me laugh so hard that I cried and gasped for breath.

This episode featured killer whales that deliberately beached themselves on the shores of Patagonia (Argentina) to capture baby seals and bring them back into the water. What I found so incredibly funny was the absurdity of a cute domestic scene of sibling seals playing on the beach interrupted by something the size of a house suddenly emerging from the sea to steal sis (or bro), and then this house flopping back and forth to get back into the water. Even funnier was that these whales didn't seem to have the slightest interest in eating the seals. They swam into deep water, then batted the seals back and forth to each other with their tails.

I know, I was a sick person. I'm better now. And I don't think my vegetarianism has anything to do with it, at least not initially, for I had already quit eating meat for several years when I first saw The Trials of Life. And, back when we let our cat outside, my wife was always perplexed how a vegetarian could take such pleasure in another creature's homicidal fury. No, it was another nature show which changed my perspective. All I remember was a scene of a lioness, at night, trying to kill a zebra. The lioness hung upside down, clinging to the zebra, with its jaws around the zebra's throat, trying to break the zebra's neck but being unable to. I remember the terror and pain in the zebra's eyes quite clearly. Anyone who thinks nature is perfect is a moron--there's every bit as much futility and suffering in it as in the human world. And there's nothing funny about that. So I stopped watching nature shows and switched over to astronomy. Even projections of our planet's future demise comfort me, maybe because that demise won't be selective but will affect/erase all life.

Until yesterday. In the wee hours of the morning, while grazing, I ran across footage of praying mantises eating birds and mice. Fascinating! My Marxist tendencies cause me to celebrate any upheaval of hierarchies, and what could be better than a reversal of the food chain? Then I had to witness my little revolutionaries being eaten by hedgehogs. Strangely, I wasn't saddened. Rather, the liberation from morality and discipline an eat-or-be-eaten mindset presents tempted me. Why should I be anxious about my consumption of natural resources and calories? Why should I worry about the homeless, the poor, the oppressed? It's only natural to be motivated by desires and selfishness, to be a consuming machine, right? So, guilt-free, I drove to the other side of Charlotte just to have lunch.

Thankfully, later that night the TV saved me. A documentary on MLK brought me out of myself. After all, if we have evolved compassion and conscience, why would we go back to a base and violent existence unless merely out of fear?