There's (arguably) nothing particularly unacceptable about killing possums per se.
There's a _lot_ that's unacceptable about killing them inhumanely, and even more when it's presented in a way that doesn't suggest that the author tried to learn better ways.
There are lots of 'humane' ways of killing animals that do not involve firearms (this is the illegal option given in the article).
Note that the author still tried an illegal method regardless (the BB gun, which is a projectile weapon).
> I had a brainwave. “I’m getting the blowtorch!” Brilliant! I could burn the possum.
I'd hope this was a poor attempt at humor, but given the actual methods attempted, who knows.
> I pathetically consulted my iPhone for ideas
If you need to consult your iPhone on how to humanely put down an animal, you probably shouldn't be doing it. Especially if you find some random advice about duck taping a knife to a broom handle and then follow it.
This whole article is horrifying.
I'm not saying she went about this the right way, but as someone who has tried and failed to kill an opossum, you realize it's pretty freaking hard to do humanely.
I'd suggest hitting the possum with a stick or shovel once—not enough to really injure the guy, just enough to make it play dead. Then you can grab a metal trash can, and shove in there. Preferably with a stick, as they are really smelly. Ensure it doesn't tip over, and call Animal Control in the morning.
If you need to kill animals to safeguard your livestock, and you don't have a method of killing them humanely, then you have already abdicated your responsibility and shouldn't be farming.
> Our species has been killing animals for thousands of years.
Thankfully our species has made some progress over the last few thousand years, and most of us are lucky to no longer be in the position where cruelty is unavoidable in order to survive. A lot of progress can still be made, but we can't use the past to excuse the actions of the present.
Seriously, one longs to stand on the sideline, revelling in the irony of seeing a city dweller chased down by his own delusional kind.
But then.. no. The Possum is part of nature, its trying to feed on farm animals held in small numbers- is part of nature, its death because it tryied to hard - is part of nature. Im very glad the author is not part of your progress. The extinctions, the fully automated farms, the wildlife instinction with gas and traps, because "hunting" is to much for someone so refinend and noble a creature.
I wish you would starve for a day. I want to see drawing calories ouf of morals. I want to see the doubts vannish in that all encompassing hole your stomache becomes. I want to see you break out of that disney delusion of nature, into the ugly reality that is nature. To accept it as part of what is. Notice how the author is not poisoning everything that crawls on her farm. Notice how she is honest to herself. How she is exausted from a lot of what life throws at her?
She is a adult.
You are not.
Just to be clear, I have nothing against hunting, only against cruelty.
And in any case, this conversation is not about hunting, but about farming, which is something that is a decidedly human invention, and so an argument towards what is and is not 'natural' is tangential. We have already left nature far behind.
I am a animal. The bacteria inside of me is there so i can diggest other living beeings, who devoured either directly or in a chain sunlight. I am part of nature, and im trying to be it in a responsible way.
Part of that responsible way is to not give into any emotional hipocrisy. I call the one, buying a plant to eat, where a whole forrest had to go forever, erasing all future opposum-opportunitys more cruel then a girl who tired eats a egg in the morning, for which she fought in rain and storm on a non-high-tech farm.
All methods detailed within are totally bananas and not ones a reasonably experienced and responsible animal farmer would think of.
Also, "murderer" is a really harsh term to throw around for someone who kills pests, even if they really suck at it and have no idea what they're doing.
In my country brushtail possums are a rapacious introduced pest (along with weasels, stoats, hedgehogs and even rats), and conservation involves continuous efforts to kill them and then stop them from reinvading from neighbouring properties.
I much prefer killing them in a trap so I don't need to do the dirty work by hand, but someone somehow does need to kill them. I admire the author for confronting this reality, and I'm sure next time she'll do it in a far more effective way that is less stress for everyone.
People in a modern urban environment (in the US, anyway) don't understand how to grow a vegetable, raise a chicken, filet a fish, mill flour and bake bread. Less than 100 years ago, everyone knew this, because almost everyone did this. But modern urban creatures are like the possum's babies - constantly feeding from the teet of a system that insulates them from real world concerns.
My mom (who lives on the 300 acre family farm) was complaining to my first cousin (who holds several state bow hunting records and at one time had a hunting show on cable TV) about how hard it was to keep the raccoons out of her vegetable garden. "How did the pioneers manage to grow vegetables?" she pondered out loud.
"They would have eaten a lot more raccoon than you do" was his reply. And he was absolutely correct. Coon, possum, squirrel, and groundhog were all on the menu in my neck of the woods well after World War II.
I agree with this. But note that people disagreeing with the author's actions are not necessarily against the killing of animals that threaten your livestock: this is a necessary reality. The issue is that this author does so in an apparently irresponsible, inhumane way. It is not necessary to torture animals.
People that use the term murderer already know that the state wouldn't get a conviction.
> I had to ram the blade of the shovel into the head of that animal about 30 times before it actually died.
And the second:
> I emptied an entire barrel full of shot into the possum, aiming for its head. After 50 pulls, I ran out of BBs.
> I would have sharpened the knife first, but now I was just committed to using the wrong tool for the job. It was terrible. I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, grunting and screeching a little with the effort. At one point, the possum grabbed onto the knife with its teeth and had enough life left to gnaw at the tape with such ferocity I thought it would wrest the knife from the broomstick.
And the eight babies of the second animal:
> I grabbed each tiny sneezing possum, plopped it into the bucket, and covered the top with an old piece of plywood. When it was over, I put all eight bodies, along with their mother, to rest in the municipal green bin. Thank God for Bay Area household composting.
This is little more than the cold recollections of a murderer. She exhibits no growth, no regret. She admits that the small amount of compassion she would have for her chickens would be due to "peer pressure."
At least this article is an excellent resource to share with would-be urban farmers.