Love Story with Birds, by Derek Furr, is a work of literature that defies easy categorization, which is partly why I enjoyed reading it. By way of poems, essays, stories, and asides I spent a great deal of time alongside Furr, as he watched birds, endured Covid, and cared for a dying dog.
Birds play a central role in this book, as do many other species. And we witness the author’s struggle to be one who does no harm yet, on occasion, harms. After an accidentally fatal encounter with a mouse Furr comes to terms with feelings of remorse as well as the larger question of why any animal, large or small, must be killed by the human animal:
Killing it without good reason (and such a reason would be hard to produce under the circumstances) is marginally different from slaughtering a pig and worse than squashing a bug – itself an act that should not be automatic. We’re not automatons, and neither are insects.
I was fascinated by how Furr deployed, defined and then examined, seemingly ordinary words such as watch and wait and depends. Furr writes about how his family’s dying dog depends on him but that this is far from a one-sided relationship.
The roots of “depend” in Latin communicate an essential aspect of the relationship, for in its earlier usage, “depend” suggested to hang from or upon. Our animals are connected to us — sometimes literally by a leash, but always for their wellbeing. “Our” should suggest not ownership but responsibility, as it does in “our children” or “our aging parents.”
Furr then expands the relationship to include all non-human animals.
It is easy enough to accept all of this in reference to pets, but it should extend, at the very least, to all domesticated animals — for instance, the cows, chickens, pigs, and other creatures that people cultivate for food. … Put simply, many species — many more than we generally wish to acknowledge — are not merely sentient but also have the capacity to desire things and seek them out. In a sense, they set goals and work toward them. These may be immediate and simple, but they are substantive from the creature’s point of view, and they are the basis of its moral status. On what grounds, therefore, do we justify removing the creature’s capacity to pursue its ends? That is, how can we justify caging it, let along killing it?
When people ask me how I define “new environmental literature” I might suggest they read this book. As it captures the inherent anxiety of sharing a planet with creatures who have no choice but to endure, as best they can, humankind. But it also points to a brighter future, one in which we depend on animals not for food but for a higher sense of fulfillment and purpose.
John is co-author, with Midge Raymond, of the eco-mystery Devils Island, forthcoming in 2024. He is also author of the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. Co-founder of Ashland Creek Press and editor of Writing for Animals (also now a writing program).
