Sublime

Qué ridículo parece el comportamiento de la pava en estas circunstancias: acepta a un enemigo natural solo porque pía y maltrata o mata a uno de su polluelos simplemente porque no lo hace. Actúa como un autómata cuyo instinto maternal estuviese controlado por ese único sonido.

In her book Labour of Love, Madeleine Bunting interviewed employees in a variety of ‘care’ settings, from care homes to GP surgeries and even in the back of an ambulance. She describes how the essential qualities of care are about the relationships between people, the bonds of interdependency that unite us, and the essential values of kindness and

Isabel had seen captivity reduce bonobos to depression-like symptoms they could not have experienced in the wild. As humans, “I think we have many modern forms of captivity,” she told me. The lesson the depressed bonobos had taught her, she said, is: “Don’t be in captivity. Fuck captivity.”

Many years ago I became fascinated by a rooster named Weirdo, who weighed over thirty pounds. His offspring, Ralph, was even bigger. The man who had raised these extremely aggressive animals had been forced to singe off their spurs with a blowtorch. Then I found Frank, a miniature horse, specially bred from sixteenth-century Spanish stock, who