BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 8
Oct 27, 2004
by Daphne Cardillo
ANIMALS:
Burial Rites
After narrating the incident to a friend, he said: "I know it is not easy to kill even when you know it would actually be a relief. I am also a hunter so I have killed wild animals many times and of course as an agriculturist I had to kill domestic animals as well a few times. It calls on some very basic instinct in us--the animal in us I suppose." Let me recount that incident again for even if it appears partly stupid to go through the long wait, still the experience leaves a mark on my being alive on planet earth.
One cloudy morning, my daughter saw a big mouse outside the door that led to the back of our yard. Accustomed to seeing only a cat roving near the area, she got scared and ran upstairs asking me to see what she found. At first, I did not budge although I was wondering why a mouse would stay still right at your door.
When I checked on the rodent a little later, it had moved a few feet away from where my daughter saw it, apparently sick and dying. At that instance, she told me to kill it while I thought of burying it alive, just for good measure. But I held back--a part of me didn't want to hurt a dying animal. So I said to her, "let's just wait for the mouse to die." Indeed, that mouse ceased to look like a pest to me, like a fly or a mosquito that one would snap to extinction. It was probably due to its size, for it looked more like one of those guinea pigs eating kangkong that my Lolo kept in a cage many years back.
Later in the afternoon when I thought it already dead, the mouse had moved into the yard. When it started to rain, my daughter observed that the dying animal tried to hide under the grass. But still wet within those thin leaves, it struggled to move slowly and finally found shelter under the fortune plant, a bush that had bigger foliage. So I told my girl, "we'll bury it tomorrow."
The following morning, the mouse laid dead under the fortune plant, right at the spot where we last saw it. Its lower jaws had a gaping hole, apparently wounded. So I decided to bury it. Still in my nightdress, I dug a hole with a bolo, a foot away from where the dead mouse laid, picked it with a dust pan and placed it inside the hole, then covered it with earth...
As a child, I used to bury a few domestic
animals in Consolacion, the village of my childhood. After a pet cat
or a puppy died, I dug a hole, built a mound over the ground, and
surrounded it with pebbles or stones. It was always a solemn ritual,
probably acted out of innocence, or simple affinity with the living.
Indeed, burying something that once had life is a sacred experience for
me.
Posted 10/26/04.
"I know it's not
easy to kill even when you know it would actually be a relief...It calls
on some very basic instinct in us--the animal in us I suppose."