I write often about mercy, compassion and animals, but sometimes I think you can’t write often enough. I am putting up emotional photographs of the old sheep, and of course and not surprisingly this has triggered an outpouring of concern, criticism and pity for them, especially on my Facebook page, where I permit comments. Why aren’t Maria and I keeping them? Why is the farmer sending most of them to slaughter in the fall? Don’t they deserve to live out their natural lives there, or here? Of course Jon and Maria will take them, one poster said. Can you imagine them letting them die? I guess this was supposed to be a compliment. It made me cringe. Is this the message I am putting out?

Another jeered that since I don’t pity them or grieve them, I wouldn’t care if they die. She added that the farmer should keep them alive.

When I replied that perhaps she would like to take the sheep, put up fencing, pay the vet bills and for hay, grain, water, shearing and farrier for years, she answered that I was petty and that she had a terraced garden and didn’t like the smell of farm animals. That’s a parable for the ages. I left it up so everyone could see it, and she happily vowed to “unfriend” me. A good move, this is not the place for her.

We live in a curious world of inverted notions of mercy. The gap between people who live with farm animals and people who don’t is almost too vast to cross. In our culture one of the most extreme  punishments is life imprisonment, next to the death penalty our most severe. Yet confining dogs to unnatural lives in crates for their natural lives in “no-kill” shelters is considered merciful, a mark of our humanity. Because we took in Simon and care for Rocky, then there must be no limit to the animals we can care for and feed. What is the difference between this and hoarding, I wonder.

Almost every animal – Rocky, Simon, the Old Sheep, even Red – becomes an object of pity, an opportunity for rescue, a measure of how piteous and dependent they are, how much they suffer, how good and wonderful we humans are who rescue and care for them. We must make a perfect world them, offer them a paradise without death or suffering.Thus people tell me every day there is only one way to acquire an animal to live with – rescue it.

As you know I have a number of animals who were “rescued.” Simon, Rocky, Frieda, and Izzy before them. Animals I love.

But that is only one dimension of my life with animals, not the primary one. These other ideas of mercy and compassion are not my notions or beliefs and you are all entitled to honesty from me. I have no pity for the old sheep as they are not piteous and they have lived far longer and better than most of the sheep on the earth. They are not furbabies or pets. No farmer or writer for that matter, can afford to keep large numbers of animals for years because it’s nice. No farmer should. Animals do not “deserve” to be kept alive by any means at all costs because it makes humans feel better about themselves. We have choices to make, decisions, costs to consider, lives to have that are in balance and include perspective.

I respect animals by permitting them to be animals, not objects to be exploited for my emotional gratification. They have the right to live out their natural lives. Mary Shelley had it right. Just because we can do things doesn’t mean that we should. They are not dependent and piteous creatures. They are entitled to be themselves, not reflections of us.

I would not keep the old sheep here so that they can replicate the horrors of the human aging process – being warehoused in a rural nursing home for years while they die slowly and accrue horrific medical problems and costs. Not the choice for me, not my choice for them. I do not pity them, but that does not mean I don’t care for them. I will not grieve for them, but that does not mean I don’t feel for them. I am grateful to the farmer for giving me and them the experience of being with them and photographing them for a last summer.

I admire him. He is forever in debt, has four jobs, two kids in college, works from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day of the week. And still he took the trouble to think of them and bring them here for this summer. I pity the animals who don’t get a farmer like that.  I would not be the one to tell him he deserves to keep 25 aging sheep alive for years because it makes somebody with a terraced garden feel good with her morning coffee.