Sad Animal Deaths

[Mad Dog]

When I was about five years old, my grand step grandfather still owned a dairy farm but it was more of a traditional farm in that he also had a chicken coup with a bunch of chickens, five or six horses, one very mean goose, and a couple of dozen medium sized and full grown pigs.

One day, about a dozen of his pigs got loose. They tried for hours to get the pigs back in to the pig pen, but to no avail, the pigs refused to go back in because they were having too much fun munching on the corn in the corn feild located behind the barn. So the decision was made to put the pigs down because it was getting dark and the pigs would have become a danger to the community had they been allowed to roam free.

Out came a hunting rifle and the pigs became target practice. Being very young, and in an exciting situation, I thought all the grown ups were having fun and I wanted in on it so I asked my dad if I could get a turn. He looked at me, furrowed his brow and handed me the rifle. He had set up shop on a bale of hay so when he moved out of the way, I did the same.

I sighted down the barrel of the rifle and put a bead on one of the pigs with my dad giving me tips on how to handle the rifle. As I began to apply pressure to the trigger, it was then I realized I was about to take a life, and a tear appeared on my cheek. Soon there was a flood of tears and I left the rifle on the bale of hay and ran to my grand mothers bedroom and hid under her bed. Each time the gun went off I flinched. I counted ten more shots. Brutal.

[SmartyPants]

I have trouble with that too. The biggest thing I've ever killed was a mouse and it made me feel nauseous doing it. I have no problem whatsoever seeing dead animals, my family is big on hunting and I watch tons of deer gutted every fall, but actually doing the killing act I could never do. Hell I'd even help them clean and gut them if they wanted me to, but I couldn't pull the trigger. I can't even watch other people kill things without feeling like I want to cry.

[Torque]

I hunt occasionally, but I will only hunt what I eat. In my family, it's venison venison venison, beef is practically a delicacy. I don't really hunt buck too much any more because I'm not all about the rack and the buck-doe ratio in the area is fairly precarious.

I have had pet mice since I was very little. I put out mouse traps only because my food is very important to me, but I will admit a little sadness when I see a dead bug-eyed mouse in the trap the next morning.

I've only lost one dog and he died pretty tragically/weirdly, but I've experienced a hell of a lot of sad deaths working with equine veterinarians. Recently we went to a Thoroughbred breeding farm where a mare had just given birth to a beautiful little colt a week prior. He hadn't been right for over 24hrs by the time we got there and when I went into the stall he was lying flat out in a heap struggling to breathe with thick milky nasal discharge. I was asked to restrain him while the vet took blood and did an exam but he couldn't even stand and it wasn't really necessary for me to do it. I'll never forget how hot he was, how scarily faint and fast his heartbeat was, and how the flies were all over his eyes and nose and he was too far gone to care.

I held him for probably 40 minutes trying to keep the bugs off of him and position his head so he could breathe a little easier. His mom was standing in the corner not moving and never taking her eyes off of him. As with many animals, the pain and anxiety were very much visable in her eyes.

He died overnight. I've been back to that farm several times since and all the new births and sick animals that do get better more than even out the sad stories, but there's still so many individuals I don't think I'll ever forget.

[Mad Dog]

When I was a Junior in High School, as the bus dropped me off at my house, I heard a huge commotion coming from out of the chicken coup. I looked, and some chickens had excaped from the pen, some of them were trying to excape. They were in a whirl of flight and there were feathers flying everywhere.

There were only about forty chickens left out of the one hundred my dad had bought earlier that year because a weasel had gotten to a bunch of them. At first dad had let them free range, but the weasel took a huge toll. We were constantly finding dead chickens in weird places, for example on the work bench in our little shop or on top of the family car. So when I got off the bus I figured that maybe the weasel had gotten in the chicken coup.

This however, was not the case. when I finally got back there to see what was happening to the chickens, I looked in side and there was one of our family dogs mauling another chicken to death. He had snapped up one by the neck and whipped it in the air and it landed in a bloody, feathery heap. I said "Hey !!" and the dog froze. Then he leaped out of the pen with one fluid motion and took off like a shot. I opened up the door to the pen to survey the carnage, and as I looked I saw that it was like Chicken WWII in there.

There were chickens with there wings ripped off, chickens with gapping holes in their sides, dead chickens in heaps. Live chickens chickens missing feet. Chickens suffering through all manner of stress and trauma. I was the only one home at the time, and after thinking about it for a minute I knew what I had to do.

I went inside and grabbed my .22 rifle, loaded it, grabbed a handful of shells and put them in my pocket and went back out to the chicken coup to finish off the chickens I didn't think would survive and put them out of there misery. Bang, bang, bang, I killed one chicken after another until the job was done and there were only a few healthy chickens left. The smell was bloody awful.

Pretty soon, my dad arrived home from work and he came out to see what had happened. I looked up at him and said, "The chickens were my job, the dog is yours" He lifted his eye brows, looked at me and said "Uh huh", turned around and went in to find the 12 gage.