My coworker and I are here with open minds and very mixed feelings. It's the first time either of us have had a part in a matanza -- a community livestock slaughter. All week we've talked over our limited picture of what it will be like, and which part will be the hardest. We've been euphemizing it with the same word we use for the vegetables: "harvest". And we agree that we need to do this, in order to be consistent and conscious humans. We both eat meat, and -- until now -- have lived safely separate from the processes that bring us this aspect of our food. Which today will change.
The neighbor who's coming to supervise us pulls up in his dusty white truck. In the back are a sheep and two goats. In a pen nearby, we have three more goats ready. One bit of information has made the decision to slaughter them easier to grasp: they carry a genetic disorder which infected most of the flock they came from, and which, if they live to be adults, will most likely cause them to suffer. Large sores will start to cover their bodies, and if they happen to be nursing babies, the disease will be passed on to them as well. Knowing this helps me to distance from the fact that, right now, they're small, lively, noisy, and yes, cute.
But there's still the essential question: can I be complicit -- participant even -- in taking the life of another creature? This is new territory for thought and action both. I mean, there's the time that I couldn't swerve quick enough and ran over a rabbit. And all those ants that I've walked on, in spite of my careful steps -- some friend called me a Jainist recently, and I took it as a surprised compliment. Of course there are the cockroaches that I squashed without a twinge of conscience. We draw the line of life and worthiness at different fine points. My coworker here on the farm has enthusiastically been using the word "specist" lately. He points out that we indiscriminately end the lives of plants, insects, and microorganisms daily, while giving preference to humans and their well-being over any other consideration. He's got a point. None of us are really innocent here. Maybe we'd do well to start by just getting honest about that fact.
For now, it's time to end with the philosophy and get to work. We lead the sheep over to a shady patch of earth beneath an elm thicket. Gently, one person at each end, we lay her down on her side and hold her front and back legs. The neighbor who's done this work before kneels in the middle. I'm glad he's here, bringing an energy of calm, caring competence. I would certainly not want to do this with someone who was rushed or mechanical about it. He carries a surprisingly short knife: all our knives are smaller than I would have expected. With focused intention, he sets the point at the side of the sheep's neck, just below the ear where a large vein can be found. One soft pressing motion, in and then upward, and brilliant scarlet flows from the tiny wound. We all fall quiet.
Like every process on this farm, the death of this creature will be accompanied with peace and reverence. As we settle into a weighty and waiting silence, watching the bright red pulsing line nudged out by a slowing heartbeat, the farmer murmurs prayer-words to the quiet sheep. He thanks her for her life, and for the life she will give to us. He hopes she will go without too much suffering, and urges her to seek that next place to move on to. And he explains to the rest of us that, just as animals everywhere are made to suffer by violence and mistreatment, so are they treated unjustly by being denied a respectful passage to their own death.
It takes her about ten minutes to reach her last breath. In this space, she only cries a few times, each time with a weaker voice which scours my heart. Once in a while her body convulses, legs twisting and lifting off the ground with a strength we can barely restrain. The farmer tells us that the movement is her life energy finding its way up and out of her body. I picture a dull shimmer flowing from hoof to hip to belly and then out through her open mouth. The image, I realize, looks much like the life-lines drawn on Native American animal fetishes.
The act of waiting with another being, while breath and energy leave body, is a profound one. As we work, I realize that I've never had the privilege, or the responsibility, of sitting with a person as they leave this life. I gain new admiration for those who have kept such a vigil, and how it must require them to step outside their sense of self and importance, while carrying a grief so much more immediate and personal than this one. It's a privilege, in a way, to be here as students of death, without attachment. In these minutes, sitting on earth without words, we have no other purpose than to be present witnesses to a journey which we can neither see nor understand. But we do feel it. As some of the goats take longer than others to finish their struggles, we all lean in around them and breathe silent prayers and encouragement that their passage be as quick and as peaceful as possible. Their lack of language leaves us, for the most part, also speechless.
The act of waiting with another being, while breath and energy leave body, is a profound one. As we work, I realize that I've never had the privilege, or the responsibility, of sitting with a person as they leave this life. I gain new admiration for those who have kept such a vigil, and how it must require them to step outside their sense of self and importance, while carrying a grief so much more immediate and personal than this one. It's a privilege, in a way, to be here as students of death, without attachment. In these minutes, sitting on earth without words, we have no other purpose than to be present witnesses to a journey which we can neither see nor understand. But we do feel it. As some of the goats take longer than others to finish their struggles, we all lean in around them and breathe silent prayers and encouragement that their passage be as quick and as peaceful as possible. Their lack of language leaves us, for the most part, also speechless.
As the day progresses and the strangeness becomes familiar, I step up to help with more of the work. I find, surprised, that it's possible to help with skinning the carcass, once it's hung by its back legs from the nearby tree. First, sliding the knife around legs and back to peel off the soft hide, the fascia underneath parting as smoothly as water when the blade is angled properly. Later, I try separating the internal organs, making a quick slit down the belly beneath the thin surface of skin. It's so hard to stay ahead of the entrails, which immediately begin to slide out, while not puncturing any of them and releasing toxins onto the meat. Finally I'm able to reach in deep, up to my elbow in the cavern of ribs, and bring out liver and heart. The only way it's possible to do this is that these beings are shifting, minute by minute, from living fellow creatures to objects that meet a simple need: the sustaining of life. Touching the interior of the body is not repulsive like I might have expected. It only feels like moist skin. And there's so little blood, compared to what we had imagined. At the end of the day, the carcasses are ready for delivery to a local butcher, and all that's left of six animals fills two plastic tubs. And only a small stain of crimson marks the spot on the earth where each of them lay.
When we've collected all the remainders in the plastic tub, we load it and a wheelbarrow into the truck and drive half a mile up the gravel road. Moving the tub into the wheelbarrow, we walk another quarter of a mile up a ravine, climbing over cholla and barrel cactus, and leave its contents on a rocky hillside, in a place the farmer says the coyotes like to come. They'll have no qualms about taking their place in the life-circle. Hopefully today, we learned a thing or two about it as well.
But it's good to allow these lessons time to settle their weight in the heartmind. I'm glad to find another skill that I'm capable of, if needed, though I hope I don't need it again any time soon. And we're all relieved to find that our dinner this night is vegetarian.
