for the animals

As a little boy I used to visit hog-killing a lot. My eyes were in another universe than they are today. The killing was a pleasure. Family celebration. Aunties, uncles, cousins, grandma and grandpa. Loud welcomes, laughter over head and ears, plum brandy and ‘kids, go have a look on the piggy’.

The piggy was grunting, calm and curious walking in the yard. Happy that for a moment he or she got out of the tiny, dark sty.

I know it might sound a little stupid, but today when I visit a hog-killing, one of my reasons for doing so is that there be at least one person who won’t be delighted from his or her dying and cutting up of his body.

This was a little killing. First public farming hog-killing in Moravská Bránice. There weren’t many people and from those that came they all knew each other. I was a stranger with a camera and a strange girl.

One of the organizers came to ask whether we were some animal rightists. I was not in the mood for incognito so I replied that we were and if they had some problem with that. He said that he is afraid of misuse and that they do not wish me to take pictures and films. That they had their own people for this. I shrugged my shoulders.

When the killing started, I took out my camera and started taking pictures. How he or she looked around in the cage and how they pulled him or her out of the cage and how he or she didn’t want to, how he or she defied and screamed. How he or she fell down under the slaughter gun and how laughing people kneeled down on him or her (ha ha, it’s twitching). How the knife cut his or her throat and how the butcher made the wound even larger by cutting out a piece of flesh and holding it open so that the blood runs out quicker. How the children were taking pictures as a souvenir.

And again I don’t know which way to go…