Love

Dear Deer,

When I was a kid, I used to say that I loved animals, but today I have a hard time saying those words. The declaration feels peurile, immature, like something a teenage girl would say, doodling horsies and kittens in her notebook and then going home to eat chicken. The words seem empty and hypocritical, devoid of meaning. I hear "animal lover" and I think: Paris Hilton, with her little dog Tinkerbell sitting in the palm of her manicured hand, wearing something by Gucci.

Today when I say "I love animals," I mean it, fiercely, as one loves family. I love you all, from the downiest, most fragile and put-upon little domestic turkey in a factory farm hatchery, to the few remaining packs of wild wolves roaming the forests. I love cats, despite their cruel games with little birds. I love the glinting fish slicing through the ocean, somehow surviving in the midst of countless nets. I love your incredible variety, your complex languages and lives, your customs and habits.

When I really open myself up to remember where you all are, to try to understand and feel the pain of a chicken in an egg battery, or the sorrow of a cow separated from her calf, I cry; and so I don't think about these things too often. One wants to remember one's family happy, healthy, as pictured in old album photos, an idyllic and selectively remembered past. And so when I remember you, and the other animals, I picture you running away and somehow escaping, or living free and happy, unchased and unmolested.

When I say "I love animals," I mean that I have come to know you a little better. I mean that I see and love and understand your teeth and your claws as well as your soft fur. I mean that I am happy when I see you. It is a grown-up sort of love and I won't let anyone take it for the facile and duplicitous "I love you" that falls so easily from the lips of those that love only with words, and do nothing but hate with their actions. I love you as my brothers and my sisters, and I hide my love for you in my heart.

Love,
A