Annual Dog Massacre

Very recently, I participated in my first Annual Dog Massacre here in Thailand. It's a very festive tradition that has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's quite simple. For one day of the year, the locals hit the streets looking for stray dogs accompanied by music, food, and great cheer. You can go out in little groups or large groups. Some people go out alone but most people go with their family as this is a family oriented tradition. Once people find stray dogs, it's game on. You can hunt down the dogs in any way possible. It's great fun.

Because it was my first year, the people around me gave me a machete. Machetes were the most common tool to slaughter dogs back in the day and so many people today still stick with that. However, anything else is fine too. I've seen swords and other knives. Guns weren't uncommon and neither was shooting the gun up in the air in celebration after having decimated a dog or two. I did see one automatic rifle but I didn't see it being fired as there were no dogs around. It's really exhilarating and a great way of getting to know the people around you.

My group, which consisted of my girlfriend and some of our neighbours here, ended up cornering a pack of dogs. There were exactly eight of them. I know because after we murdered the lot of them, we hung them up to showcase our victory. Once we cornered the poor animals, we moved in with our machetes. Our group was an all-machete group by the way. Oh yeah, one of the little kids with us had a pitchfork but she didn't use it because it was more like a prop. She used the ancestral machete her parents gave her. It was so exciting as we moved in on the dogs and started cutting them up. Dog blood splattered all over our faces. It was amazing!

Oh and at one point, there was this one dog who ran away from another group down the road. Unfortunately for the four-legged animal, it came right in our direction. I swiped at its legs with my machete, injuring it badly as it collapsed with a whimper. Then, the eldest in our group, our neighbour's grandpa, didn't hesitate to lunge down on the animal with his machete pointed down. It went in the dog's gut, killing it instantly. We all cheered and high-fived the awesome grandpa. It was a great team moment.

On our way home, we saw hundreds and hundreds of dog carcasses. The extermination had gone successfully. We ended up bringing about 25 carcasses home. We spread them around the garden as a sign of good fortune. According to local news, one thousand dogs were killed in our province alone. The evening was then followed by good food, lots of alcohol consumption, and celebrations that lasted late into the night. It was a great first time.

If it wasn't obvious to you, let me make it clear that the above text is nothing but a sick joke, a really sick joke. Please forgive me for the horrible imagery. However, that sick joke and horrible imagery were inspired by something I saw in the news today about an annual tradition of hunting dolphins. It takes place in the Faroe Islands and apparently it takes place in Japan too. The images I saw today were disturbing. The sea was red with the blood of dolphins. Many were already dead as others struggled to escape in the last moments of their lives.

Dolphins and dogs are among the closest animals to human beings. They're both intelligent creatures with complex languages of their own. I don't mean to disrespect the traditions of any country, but to me this annual dolphin hunt seems absolutely disgusting. It's similar if people went out and exterminated dogs for sport. If we continue to do the same things, the world will continue to be the same kind of place it has always been. It takes creativity to change the world. Following our traditions blindly will lead to more darkness.

There are all kinds of beautiful things written about dolphins. Dolphins are like the humans of the sea. I've read that humans and dolphins share 95% of the same DNA. The percentage isn't really the point and I've never delved into scientific studies about it. It's the humanity and the commonality we have that should be one obvious give-away as to why dolphins shouldn't be hunted down en masse. 1428 dolphins were murdered by these traditional island folk for this year's 'festivities.' And the karmic justice in that is that most of the dolphin meat will be consumed by these people. They'll eat the poisoned meat of murdered dolphins and it will be lodged in their DNA until the day they die. That kind of karma sounds like it could follow you around lifetime after lifetime too.

In my own life, I've made it a mission to eat less and less meat. For example, I never cook meat myself. That's my way of limiting meat consumption in my life. I avoid red meat whenever I can and try to stick to poultry, eggs, and fish. One day, I will limit those options too. It is a process that's been taking me a long time but this is my own pace. I don't see the point in eating more kinds of meat. I'm sure those Faroese eat plenty of meat throughout the year. Would it kill them to skip eating a certain kind of meat? Until they do, they'll kill thousands and thousands of dolphins every year. 

It's things like these that make me, for a second, wish the pandemic continued for longer and killed off more humans. Humans are the greatest threat to the natural world. Of course, there are great humans too who are helping as best as they can. And I'm sure there are some Faroese who abstain from this tradition and speak out against it too. It's just that the masses are living in an over-consumptive state of lunacy they call normal. When will our planet realign itself with universal laws?