Readers React: Readers fume, muse on the killing of Cecil the lion

Some of the outrage over the killing of Zimbabwe’s Cecil the lion and the accusations against big-game hunter Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist, found its way into our inbox this week. But amid the harsh expressions of contempt for someone who would kill, behead and skin a protected lion for sport are letters from several readers who take a broader view of the tragedy.

A few readers were moved enough by Cecil’s death to send us poetry (one even composed his own poetic eulogy for the lion), and several pondered what the lion’s killing and the anger over it say about our culture.

Laura Brown of Pasadena finds a parallel in 18th century poetry:

For no other reason than sport, someone shot down a beautiful creature with his crossbow. That’s the story in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1798 poem, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Part of the mariner’s punishment was telling his story to strangers, which is now happening to Palmer via social media. And how did the mariner finally get redemption? His penance didn’t matter; his suffering didn’t matter; but what did matter was having a change of heart toward other living creatures.

Perhaps Palmer should take to heart the ending of Coleridge’s poem:

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

Catherine Jayne of Thousand Oaks suggests better trophies than animal carcasses:

While trophy hunters may be disproportionately Americans, you only have to look at the outrage in the U.S. at to know that big game hunters don’t represent America.

Most Americans cannot relate to Palmer’s “sport.” He paid more money than many Americans make in a year to cause an innocent animal a slow, agonizing death.

Zimbabwe is one of the world’s poorest countries. How many children in the southern African nation could be vaccinated, fed and educated with the $50,000 Palmer reportedly paid to hunt? Trophy hunters should fill their wall space with real trophies: shots of schools they have helped build or faces of those whose lives they’ve changed.

Long Beach resident Brent Trafton admonishes the culture that produced Palmer:

While the outrage over Cecil’s death is encouraging, it doesn’t address the true cause of the killing.

We live in a culture that habitually and needlessly kills billions of animals every year for food, sport and clothing. Our government subsidizes the industries that support factory farming. We are fishing many species in our oceans to near extinction. This is the culture that created Palmer.

It is easy to point fingers, but ultimately we all need to take responsibility for the culture that creates big-game hunters. We can all help by boycotting factory farming, limiting our consumption of animal products, and calling for an end to all farm subsidies that ultimately benefit animal agriculture.

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