Making Nature Sacred Pages 52-53- Erika Sikon

On page 53 of John Gatta’s text, “Making Nature Sacred” he talks about a Quaker John Woolman. Woolman describes an experience he had in his childhood to explain human connection with the “brute creation.” He says that when he was a child he threw a rock at a robin and killed her. Realizing what he had done he climbed up the tree and killed all of the babies in the robin’s nest. He felt it was the right thing to do. It was his ethical duty considering he killed their mother. He even quotes Prov. 12:10 as he decides what to do. “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Woolman believes that “purely gratuitous malice toward the most helpless of God’s creatures violates the deepest nature of humanity as well as of God” (Gatta 53).
What would you do if you were put in a similar situation? If you thoughtlessly killed a mother animal, would you leave the babies there to die or would you kill them yourself? Would you hope they would make it on their own?
If I had a similar incident I would have not thrown the rock killing the mother bird, but if I had I would have taken the little chicks to an animal rescue center or called animal rescue. However, the Quaker John Woolman was alive in the 1700’s and did not have animal control services. It this case I would have tried to take care of the chicks myself.