Death Be Not Proud

Most people have not thought about how animals die at all. They think they will die -- and that wild animals die -- in a soft dry place, gently lulled to sleep without pain or fear, on a morphine drip, and with Mozart on the tape deck. In fact, most people die scared and alone and in some degree of pain in hospitals and nursing homes, while most wild animals are killed by other wild animals, starve to death in disease and illness, or crawl off to die shattered at the side of the road after vehicle impact. The exit that a skilled hunter offers a deer -- a bullet to the head -- is the same exit people people often use on themselves when they have a choice.