The Birds of the Gulf

Of all the images and information coming from the oil spill, the ones that sadden me the most are the pictures of oil-laden birds struggling to survive. More than the loss of livelihood, of income, or tourism, I feel saddest about the birds.

Evidently others do, too. MoveOn.org sent to its membership one of the most upsetting pictures to surface so far of a bird in Louisiana. With the subject line “Heartbreaking,” the email called on members to protest America’s dependence on oil. MoveOn could have sent a video of angry, frustrated Gulf residents or pictures of the oil plume itself, but instead its organizers chose the bird.

And what about the deaths of the 11 rig workers, which heralded the start of the disaster? Even these losses don’t seem to supersede the loss and degradation of marine life felt so keenly by so many.

Sometimes I think our complicated, uneasy relationship with animals all goes back to Genesis, where we were given “dominion” over all of the fish and birds and every creeping creature on the earth. What did God mean by dominion? When I checked to see if the translators might have had it wrong all these years, I learned that, indeed, the Hebrew word radah means to rule, to have dominion, dominate, tread down.

So the translation is right, but maybe it’s the interpretation that’s wrong. Maybe the intention is that we are to rule benevolently, as caretakers rather than as dominators.

Or maybe it’s that God got it wrong altogether, or that the writer of Genesis misunderstood. Maybe we are to steward the earth jointly with the animals and plants that share our time here together. We don’t seem to be doing such a great job by ourselves. Maybe we need to pay more attention to the clues that the animals are giving us.

The canary in the coal mine takes on more and more meaning as we destroy more of our planet. When birds are covered in oil, they can’t live very well, if at all. The message is this: neither can we.