Human Animals

Despite our opposable thumbs, superior intelligence, and special relationship with God, we are animals. Lucky for us, we’re at the top of the food chain. But we’re still animals. 

Should you require a bracing reminder, go to an airport, or visit an overpopulated city. Look at your brothers and sisters at work, scurrying to wherever, eating, huddling, waiting for buses.

We walk upright on two legs, which is funny and amusing if you’re in the right mood.

We have language — languages. Many of them. We’re civilized.

We’re killers, murdering our own kind and all the others. But we have churches and books and pretty pictures. Of all the animals we’re the most duplicitous.

We have memories and historical records, and, in our most encouraging moments, we can explain the stars and weather and why one beetle species is different than 350,000 others. We’re too smart.

The mackerel fears the dolphin, and the rabbit fears the hawk. We fear the dark. And ridicule.

Of all the animals, we are the only ones concerned with justice, and what will become of us when we leave this sunny home. Indeed, we are the ones that understand — or struggle to understand — this thing called death and this inexplicable state called consciousness.

But we will eat the weak if we must.

Is our maker proud? Does the squid wonder if he has a maker?

We have no plumage, nor ravishing colors like the butterfly. But when we’re not irredeemably ugly, we are beautiful. Hear the sound that emanates from our throat! Our delicate ululation calls back to our ancestors that used all four limbs to ambulate.

All living things must die. All the animals.