Raising the Peaceable Kingdom by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Author:Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

THREE

The Peaceable Kingdom

TO SOME EXTENT, I can say that after six months the goal of this experiment was achieved: All the animals tolerated one another, and none was aggressive with any of the others. This was precisely what I had been hoping to demonstrate—that if animals (humans?) are raised together in proximity, and if they have a “caretaker” (“leader” is too grandiose a word, especially for me) dedicated to achieving tolerance and a peaceful environment, the animals (humans?) will move naturally in this direction. It is not something that needs to be forced upon them, it will simply happen. I was satisfied that what I saw with my own eyes verified this belief and that the animals bore this out. The next step was to see if the animals would become friends, but I decided to adjust my goal: It was no longer a question of creating friendship once the peaceable kingdom was achieved, but rather a matter of giving the animals freedom, the freedom I included in the definition of happiness, human or otherwise. After all, I began to reason, what I wished for these animals (or any other animal, for that matter) was happiness. So I still had to ask myself, were all the animals leading an optimally happy life? Here is where the animals have ended up:

Moa and Moana, the chickens, were now free: In principle, they could stay out all day long. And they did indeed roam the beach, use our garden, play in the grass, but mostly, if we were indoors, they wanted to be indoors with us. If I was inside and closed the door, the chickens would stand mournfully by the window staring in, like orphans at a Christmas dinner. I couldn’t stand it, so I let them in.

I made a deal with the neighbors: I would keep the chickens in until eight a.m. every morning on weekdays and until nine on weekends. Otherwise, Moa’s crowing at five forty-five every morning bothered them. (I loved the sound at any time—it always made me feel I was in the country and that all was well with the world.)

The chickens decided the warm laundry room was their favorite place to sleep. They had wandered in there one day, and they flew up into one of the cubbyholes and settled down for the night. We put straw into the cubby in the evening after that, and every day, as soon as the sky began to darken, they headed for the laundry room from wherever they were—the garden, the beach, or more usually in our house. And every morning at eight I took them out to the beach, even though they would follow me straight back into the house (or if I was sitting reading on the deck, they would follow me there and hang out until I returned to the house). I think they saw me as part of their flock, an über-chicken, so where I went, they went. At first I stayed out with them

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.