The Bond

Chapter One

The Ties That Bond

I’ll never forget an encounter I witnessed, as a teenager, between
my mother and a mouse. I was in the dining room, Mom was
in the kitchen a few steps away, and we were chatting about nothing
in particular. I was doing most of the jabbering, and as I looked
toward the kitchen doorway I was the first to spot the tiny intruder.
I was surprised but gave no audible reaction. But when Mom caught
a glimpse of our visitor, she let out a sound none of us kids had ever
quite heard before—a gasp followed by a piercing shriek. I guess the
mouse had never heard such a scream either, because in an instant
the creature scurried across the kitchen floor and disappeared into
the tight space beneath the stove.
By then Mom was standing on a chair, just like in a cartoon.
Not yet able to exhale, she whimpered, “There’s a mouse!” I ran
into the kitchen just as she stepped down from the chair and rushed
out. I can still recall her wide-eyed expression of fear as she dashed
by me and then ran up the stairs to her bedroom. I got my bear-
22 the bond
ings, and then followed to calm her, as well as any thirteen-year-old
could manage.
Mom’s reaction was not exactly proportional to the threat. The
mere sight of the mouse triggered some deep-seated fear, planted
not by any incident in her own life but ages earlier by the experiences
of our human ancestors. I imagine the little guy was pretty
scared himself, running for his life once he found himself out in the
open.
Rodents, snakes, and certain other species have this effect on us.
Many people
have a conditioned fear of snakes in particular, even
in areas without poisonous species. Younger children rarely exhibit
such fear, but often by age five or so become more wary. Primates
react much as we do. They don’t have chairs to jump on, but they
get up those trees in a hurry.
Large predators, of course, elicit a similar instinctive reaction in
people.
An experience of my friend and colleague Katherine Bragdon
has stayed with me because it still seems so completely irrational.
Katherine and I have run a number of political campaigns for
animals, including a ballot initiative in Oregon in 1994 to ban the
use of hounds in hunting bears and mountain lions. Critics of the
ballot initiative—mostly leaders of sport hunting organizations—
shamelessly played off people’s
fears, arguing that if the initiative
passed, mountain lions soon would prowl the suburbs and stalk
children in school yards. In debates with our opponents, Katherine
and I countered that hunting with packs of dogs was unsporting
and inhumane.

From the book THE BOND: Our Kinship with Animals,Our Call to Defend Them by Wayne Pacelle. Copyright © 2011 by  Wayne Pacelle and The Humane Society of the United States. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow an imprint of HarperCollins  Publishers.