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Comment by Osmium | Hacker News Reader

> and the most humane option is illegal.

There are lots of 'humane' ways of killing animals that do not involve firearms (this is the illegal option given in the article).

Note that the author still tried an illegal method regardless (the BB gun, which is a projectile weapon).

> I had a brainwave. “I’m getting the blowtorch!” Brilliant! I could burn the possum.

I'd hope this was a poor attempt at humor, but given the actual methods attempted, who knows.

> I pathetically consulted my iPhone for ideas

If you need to consult your iPhone on how to humanely put down an animal, you probably shouldn't be doing it. Especially if you find some random advice about duck taping a knife to a broom handle and then follow it.

This whole article is horrifying.

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Our species has been killing animals for thousands of years. This should be in the realm of something you can look up online and do yourself.

I'm not saying she went about this the right way, but as someone who has tried and failed to kill an opossum, you realize it's pretty freaking hard to do humanely.

I'd suggest hitting the possum with a stick or shovel once—not enough to really injure the guy, just enough to make it play dead. Then you can grab a metal trash can, and shove in there. Preferably with a stick, as they are really smelly. Ensure it doesn't tip over, and call Animal Control in the morning.

Part of farming responsibly is anticipating these problems before they happen and knowing how to deal with them.

If you need to kill animals to safeguard your livestock, and you don't have a method of killing them humanely, then you have already abdicated your responsibility and shouldn't be farming.

> Our species has been killing animals for thousands of years.

Thankfully our species has made some progress over the last few thousand years, and most of us are lucky to no longer be in the position where cruelty is unavoidable in order to survive. A lot of progress can still be made, but we can't use the past to excuse the actions of the present.

Sorry Sir, your high horse has Atresia ani,we have to put it down.

Seriously, one longs to stand on the sideline, revelling in the irony of seeing a city dweller chased down by his own delusional kind.

But then.. no. The Possum is part of nature, its trying to feed on farm animals held in small numbers- is part of nature, its death because it tryied to hard - is part of nature. Im very glad the author is not part of your progress. The extinctions, the fully automated farms, the wildlife instinction with gas and traps, because "hunting" is to much for someone so refinend and noble a creature.

I wish you would starve for a day. I want to see drawing calories ouf of morals. I want to see the doubts vannish in that all encompassing hole your stomache becomes. I want to see you break out of that disney delusion of nature, into the ugly reality that is nature. To accept it as part of what is. Notice how the author is not poisoning everything that crawls on her farm. Notice how she is honest to herself. How she is exausted from a lot of what life throws at her?

She is a adult.

You are not.

I appreciate your language if not your conclusions.

Just to be clear, I have nothing against hunting, only against cruelty.

And in any case, this conversation is not about hunting, but about farming, which is something that is a decidedly human invention, and so an argument towards what is and is not 'natural' is tangential. We have already left nature far behind.

We have deformed it, redefined it, idolized and frozzen parts of it and restored seperat parts of it. And we are still part of it.

I am a animal. The bacteria inside of me is there so i can diggest other living beeings, who devoured either directly or in a chain sunlight. I am part of nature, and im trying to be it in a responsible way.

Part of that responsible way is to not give into any emotional hipocrisy. I call the one, buying a plant to eat, where a whole forrest had to go forever, erasing all future opposum-opportunitys more cruel then a girl who tired eats a egg in the morning, for which she fought in rain and storm on a non-high-tech farm.

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