Im' Sorry Wilbur, we failed you

I was stunned to read an article in the Local section of my newspaper today about a hog at Glades Day School being tortured and “feared dead.”

It seems that overnight, someone came on the campus of the school and grabbed the largest pig in the pen, Wilbur, and tortured her with rocks, sticks, wooden rods, whatever. The rocks, etc, were found at the scene, which was so bloody and gruesome, that it shocked police. Wilbur was missing, and several other pigs were injured as well. But it was the pigs’ emotional state that worries students. When the caregivers (and I use that word lightly) came to the pen in the morning, the other pigs drew back, screaming in a way that they have never done before “It was a sound like I’ve never heard a bunch of pigs do in my life” said the man in charge. I am sickened and furious by this news story. G-damn it, will this ever stop?


It’s very old news by now that people who hurt animals will not hesitate to hurt people if given the chance. Whoever did this must be caught and prosecuted for animal cruelty. If the students are, as the story indicates, fearful that “it will happen again,” it is their responsibility to insure the safety of the animals, as it was all along. Those animals should have been secured behind locked doors. That anyone was able to get in and hurt them in the first place is a breach of their responsibility to stewardship of the animals in their care. Those kids failed Wilbur and the other pigs. We failed Wilbur for not teaching these kids to watch their animals more diligently.

Pigs are, indeed, sentient animals with sensitivities and emotions superior to many other animals. They are much more intelligent than other animals, such as dogs and cats, who are far more protected and “beloved.” I question the entire premise of raising pigs in a school where kids are taught to care for them, raise them, see to their every need, and then send them off to slaughter. What if these kids get attached to their charges? What if they develop a bond? Are they still expected to send them off to slaughter? What kind of mixed message is that? It tells kids to disregard their feelings, suppress them because this is what we do to animals. It tells kids that it’s ok to kill that which we have come to care about. As a humane educator, I spend my days in classrooms across the county teaching the exact opposite…..it’s not about loving animals; it’s about respect.

This also goes back to the tired, old arguments that pigs are not aware and that’s why it’s ok to keep them in tiny crates, so tiny they can’t even turn around. If pigs are “easily stressed out” as the article admits, then I hope that today, on Election Day, on the day California voters vote on Prop 2, the pigs and chickens in factory farms will get a modicum of relief. Floridians did it a few years back with the gestation crate initiative, and it’s time for Californians to step up and do the same.

Every citizen of Belle Glade should be on alert that there is a monster in their midst; the person(s) who would do this to an animal is a cold-hearted, egomaniacal bully who will not stop at animals. By Ce