On fishing By Catherine on 7/18/2007 04:20:00 PM
Today at work (camp, for those of you keeping up) I had the unique opportunity to kill a fish with my bare hands. (I actually did it with my foot).Before you go all PETA on me, I have to qualify: I didn't want to do it. In fact, I wanted to throw the fucker back in and let him live, but I work at a camp that fills the (man made) pond with (store bought) bass, sunfish, and perch and then allows campers to take them home. As counselors, we wrap them up, still flip-flopping about, in aluminum foil, where they not only can't breathe but also roast in the sun as campers continue fishing. This is a tried and true tradition of camp, and I follow it like the letter of law, because if I didn't, I'd more likely than not catch all kinds of hell.
So today, at fishing, I killed a fish wrapped in aluminum. I stepped on it, broke its spine, and in my opinion, put the poor thing out of its misery. Call me Kevorkian. Call me Garn LeBaron. But I couldn't see it suffer anymore. This scenario raised an interesting moral argument for me, because I'm the first to tell you how much I love good burgers/sushi/chicken parm/what have you. But this fish I killed didn't die so I could have sushi, it died so some kid who has no comprehension of the beauty of life (and the beauty of death) or the meaning of a dollar can go home and ask Mom for $65 to have it made into a taxidermy trophy bearing the year and his name.
What's worst is that the fishing teacher, upon hearing the tale of my heroic fish euthanasia, gave me a carved piece of wood, in the shape of a hook, on a string as a necklace, and told me he was impressed with my "skill" and that he'd never seen a woman do that before.
I got rewarded for being a murderer. I felt his little spine break, and I knew then that I'd actually taken a life. I took that fish's life, a life where he never even had a chance to be someone's dinner, and everyone thinks I am sooo cool 'cause I did.
Everyone but me.