During the Summer, when the evenings were long, I used to cycle into the countryside, camera and recorder ready, to get some bird photos and record some bird vocalizations. And every so often something would happen that would make my heart stop (metaphorically, don’t worry!) I would stop the bike, and approach a field, maybe because I’d seen or heard a bird in there, and what would I see, but a fox!
I’m about to show you the clearest, and closest photos I’ve ever gotten of a beautiful red fox.
There was some fantastic luck involved in getting these photos. I was looking over a gate into a field, presumably because I’d heard a bird in there, I can’t remember the exact reason I had stopped. Normally, if you get within ten meters of a fox, they run away. And quite right too, not all humans are to be trusted. But, this fox seemed to temporarily forget that instinct for self preservation, and came within about five meters of me. In my mind I was wondering what to do. It’s a bad thing if this fox doesn’t regard humans as extremely dangerous! Me and the fox looked at each other. And then, the fox seemed to suddenly realize, “Oh yeah, humans are dangerous!” and ran off. And I’m glad. As lucky and joyful as I felt to get these very close up photos, I feared for the safety of the fox if they didn’t realize that often times, humans are bad news. I’m glad the fox seemed to realize that staying away from the homo sapiens is just common sense!
The other reason there’s always luck involved in seeing foxes, or in getting fox photos, is because, unlike a lot of birds, foxes don’t seem to have regular hang out spots, places where you can go where you’re pretty much guaranteed to see one. Or if they do have places where they like to congregate, I don’t know where they are! That’s why with very few exceptions, all of my fox encounters happened by pure accident while I was on some other mission. Perhaps I was heading back to a location where there’s often starlings. Perhaps 3 days previously in that location there were swallows gathered on the power lines, and I was hoping they’d still be there. Perhaps I was going back to a place where I saw a kestrel, hoping the bird would still be there, even though frankly, I’m not sure that kestrels have regular hang out spots either.
While I’m often looking to hear the vocalizations of animals I encounter, there’s something magical about encountering an animal that is completely silent. (Foxes do have vocalizations I just haven’t heard them yet.) I think this is part of the heart stopping feeling that I get from them. When a fox, completely silently, emerges from some vegetation, and approaches me, without making a sound.
These memories I’ll treasure for the rest of my life. So, the mentality of anyone who wishes to kill these animals, is beyond my comprehension.
In a way, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. But yes, in Ireland, the country where our curlews and lapwings are hanging on for dear life, where our beautiful native forests have been continually neglected in favour of cash crop frankenforests, fox hunting is still legal.
A few weeks ago as you may remember we had a presidential election. And the candidate who thankfully didn’t get in, was Heather Humphreys. Heather Humphreys has all the charisma and grace of some kind of weird female hybrid between Simon Harris and Keir Starmer. So I think we dodged a bullet by not electing her!
Here’s how she defended fox hunting:
She’s too much of a coward to directly state “Yes I support fox hunting”, but she keeps repeating, “I support rural pursuits.”
Frankly anyone who lives in the countryside should be deeply offended that Humphreys equates tearing apart an innocent animal with rural life.
Now as you might have guessed, I find Humphreys to be a loathsome and odious character, so if I’m not careful this could degenerate into a rant about her when the subject of this is that we need to eliminate fox hunting. But I just want to talk about what she said at the end of this video:
“I support the right of rural people to continue on with the pursuits that they have been doing for many many years.”
“Many many years”. This is the “tradition” argument. The “tradition” argument basically amounts to “We need to do things as they have always been done!” I don’t know why this argument persuades people so much, because on its face it should be blatantly obvious how stupid it is.
What if there was tradition of hunting you or people like you? Suppose you are blonde and there is a tradition of hunting blonde people. Suppose you have freckles and there is a tradition of hunting people with freckles. Suppose you are tall and there is a tradition of hunting tall people.
If your answer is, “The practice would be right and just if that were the case” well, what can I say, I gotta applaud that consistency!” But we both know that you would oppose any tradition, no matter how old, no matter how deeply ingrained in our culture, if YOU were going to be killed by it. Very easy to talk about the virtues of tradition when it’s not you who’s facing a cruel death isn’t it?
I mean, for fuck sake, the longest period of human history was the Stone Age. If you really believe in tradition so much, you should believe that humans adding copper to tin to make bronze was an affront to our proud Stone Age traditions. Why aren’t you opposed to the Bronze Age!
By speaking in a you tube video Heather Humphreys is violating our fine traditions, lasting millions of years, of having not yet invented the internet. Shame on her!
Look, I’m not saying traditions are inherently bad. I’m a fan of a lot of folk music around the world, and it’s very sad that a lot of these old musical styles are being erased. Language death is also an awful thing to happen, as the world gets more and more homogenized, we are more and more likely to witness human languages that already had minority status go completely extinct.
That’s why “tradition” is just an excuse. There are many ways you could preserve old traditions. Learn Irish if you don’t already speak it. Listen to some good traditional Irish music, or learn to play an instrument in that style such as the tin whistle or the bodhrán.
Many, many traditions are in danger of being erased by increasing globalization. Why, would anyone, in their right mind, pick the practice of cruelly tearing apart an innocent fox as the tradition they want to preserve?
Everyone alive today has benefited from brutal or barbaric traditions being swept away by newer more compassionate ideas. Does Heather Humphreys not see the irony of having the right to vote, and being allowed to run for president, and then turning around and saying we need to preserve fox hunting because of tradition? It’s because society has made great strides, thought we need to go a lot further, in eliminating “traditional” misogynistic attitudes that she is able to do that.
I remember, before gay marriage was legalized, the argument was “Oh no, gay marriage will ruin our marriage traditions!” And ten years on, eliminating the “tradition” of gay people not being allowed to marry, hasn’t done us any harm whatsoever.
Anyone who is alive today benefits from the dismantling of old, often ancient traditions. You are living right now, in, hopefully reasonable comfort, because of old ways of doing things that were swept aside. So you either want tradition to be preserved or you don’t, and if it’s the former, go die in some pointless war because of Victorian traditions about masculinity.
The “tradition” argument for fox hunting, invariably boils down to picking and choosing traditions, and if you support fox hunting, then you’ve got to come to terms with the fact that the tradition you’ve picked, involves murdering a defenseless animal.
But hopefully, things will change soon. Ruth Coppinger TD has introduced a bill to ban fox hunting. She speaks about that to the Dáil here:
And the final vote on the bill will occur next week, on 17th December.
What exactly is good, or worth preserving in our country, or culture, about this?:
A huge pack of dogs chasing a defenseless fox. I’m asking on a basic level, what is the appeal? If I said to someone, “There was a guy sitting down minding his own business, and a group of about ten of us chased him for hours and hours,” I’m sure people would quite rightly conclude I had a screw loose, just for me and a group of other people relentlessly pursuing somebody who was just minding their own business. Simply, simply for chasing somebody like that, let alone for doing them any physical harm.
Is there a difference between treating a human this way and a fox this way? Not in any way that matters. Foxes have pain receptors, just like us. When a group of dogs tears apart a defenseless fox (if you have any doubt about this, what do you think the dogs in the video are going to do when they catch the fox? Are they going to gently euthanize the fox? Claims that it’s “humane” are beyond absurd.) I’m not sure, to what extent, if any, this is going to feel different than if a human was torn to pieces by a group of wild dogs. Foxes have emotions, just like us. Why else would they run? Because they’re feeling a terror that we would feel if we were in the same situation.
It should be a source of wonder, and great privilege, to us all, that we get to share this landmass called Ireland with these absolutely majestic and beautiful animals. In Ireland, we have let down our fellow sentient creatures, our neighbours with other minds and other ways of being alive, for too long. Our destruction and mutilation of the Irish landscape has meant many animals are in danger of extinction. It really does add more than insult to injury that, a “sport” based on subjecting an animal to inconceivable terror, and then cruelly murdering that animal, is still legal. In fact, it’s a sick joke.
Please email your local TD and show your support for ending fox hunting once and for all. It’s long past time for this madness to end.
Ponderings Of An Autist 