Photo: Twitter
I’m sure most people have seen this picture and story floating around the past few days. Here’s one of many news reports to bring you up-to-speed. It’s incredibly unfortunately that someone finds pleasure in killing animals. The lion is such a beautiful and majestic animal. The fact that she kills as a “sport” will never make sense to me.
But, of course, I am a longtime vegetarian. The topic of hunting animals shouldn’t make sense to me. I don’t agree with consuming or killing animals. However, apparently vegetarians and vegan aren’t the only ones upset by the release of this photo. Like, everyone is upset over this. There are tons of posts all over my Facebook by friends expressing their outrage. News stories everywhere are documenting the world’s anger and there’s even a petition to block Bachman from ever returning to South Africa where she killed this lion.
All of this backlash because she killed an animal. Don’t get me wrong. I’m upset too. But, uh… guys… Don’t animals get killed everyday? Like billions of them a year to be almost exact? Billions. And granted she’s a hunter so she’s killed a lot of things but I’ve definitely killed a lot of spiders in my day. I’m not proud of this fact and I’m not going to post on Twitter a photo of me with my latest “kill.” But, it’s happened. I’ve eaten meat before, too. Granted it’s been years but technically I contributed to animals’ deaths too. The meat industry kills significantly more animals that Bachman and myself combined. And the industry kills these animals because their is a demand for meat. Not to mention, the lion in the photo looks like it had a healthy and long life which is a lot more than can be said for many factory-farmed animals. This should be our outrage.
I’m always dumbfounded when people “get it” for just a minute and then it’s gone. For a day, they are upset over the death of an animal. They are upset that someone could take joy in killing that animal. And then they eat a hamburger. And then they tweet a selfie with said hamburger. Bachman tweeted a selfie with a lion-sized hamburger. I wish all hamburger selfies got as many angry reactions as her photo but we certainly aren’t there yet. It’s definitely reassuring when the world expresses shock and disappointment over the unfortunate death of an animal. I hope this reaction can cause people to make a connection with their own plate but that is yet to be seen!