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Heavy Petting

By Jaroslav Dampfstain

There is a chain of human sympathy against suffering in the world which goes something like this: If a steamroller were headed straight for a Labrador retriever, a human baby, a member of the Swedish bikini team, Karl Rove, and an iguana, and you could save all but one of these people/creatures, which would you sentence to a future as an organic pancake? It’s a tough call, of course, but all an iguana eats is leafy vegetables, whereas Karl Rove will steal your soul and send your children to die in Iraq. (Besides, he wasn’t very interested in saving much of anything when Katrina steamrolled the Gulf Coast.)

Now make the list just three: cute doggie, swaddling infant, and scantily-clad Scandinavian model. Tougher call this time, but even Inga would scream at you to let her die a martyred waif. Narrow the list to just two: man’s best friend and a helpless child. Still an easy call? Okay, how about your own pet and some crybaby, three-year-old spoiled shit—let’s say the lovechild of Hitler and Marge Schott? Or perhaps the best pet you ever had (Lancelot the gray tabby, in my case) and Rosemary’s baby?

The thing is, plenty of folks would have gone for the dog first all the way back in paragraph one. I might be one of them. Come on, admit it, you might be, too. The care-taking relationship humans have to animals—especially our fellow mammals—seems, at times, to be one of the few redeeming qualities of sentience. Like so many inexplicable qualities of homo erectus, such as enjoying bitter, fermented grain or rooting for the Jamaican bobsled team, loving animals simply makes sense. Some might even argue it is the quiddity of being emotionally human.

Enter Alexander Pichushkin, a man whose name sounds like it was ripped straight from the pages of a Dostoyevsky novel, and rightly so. This past September, Pichushkin went on trial in Russia for the serial slaying of 52 of his fellow Russians—although he claims the number is actually 63. (He is being called the Chessboard Killer, for marking a square on a chessboard following each grisly crime. There are 64 squares on a chessboard, so if Pichushkin would only do the world a favor by offing himself, he can at least die with a sense of accomplishment.)

Pichushkin’s murderous modus operandi is ironically revealing for anyone interested in studying human emotions in relation to the animal kingdom. Here is a human being all but devoid of the ability to behave empathically, who yet possesses a perspicacious understanding of the human emotional experience: For Pichushkin lured his victims into the woods—perfect strangers, keep in mind—by convincing them he was grieving the loss of his pet dog or cat.

Let us envision several dramatic scenarios using the Steamroller Empathy Test provided above.

Scenario I

PICHUSHKIN (weeping): Will you come into the woods with me? My friend Karl Rove just died.

PERFECT STRANGER: Good. Now fuck off.

Scenario II

PICHUSHKIN (weeping): Will you come into the woods with me? My Swedish model girlfriend just died.

PERFECT STRANGER: To screw such a woman even once! I wish I had it so good!

Scenario III

PICHUSHKIN (weeping): Will you come into the woods with me? My baby just died.

PERFECT STRANGER (producing a business card): How awful! Here’s my shrink’s phone number.

Scenario IV

PICHUSHKIN (weeping): Will you come into the woods with me? My chocolate Lab Häagen-Dazs just died.

PERFECT STRANGER: Oh my God! That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard! Sure, I’ll go into the woods with you and freely allow you to pierce my eyeballs with a broken bottle then throw my freshly ground corpse into a cesspool!

Many people will go well out of their way to be a Good Samaritan for a living creature (mosquitoes and centipedes aside) over a fellow human being. I once witnessed traffic at an insanely busy five-point intersection in Chicago come to a screeching halt for a mother duck and her seven ducklings waddling across the street; whereas, I know for a fact those same drivers would not have blinked at bulldozing so many human pedestrians.

The death of an animal—especially a beloved pet—sends a vast majority of us over the brink. I have personal experience from which to draw: After learning of the tragic death of my cat Lancelot, a woman whom I had unsuccessfully been trying to woo for years invited me over to her house. She answered the door stark naked except for sackcloth and ashes and completely redefined my understanding of the term “laid to rest.” When our night of heavy pet mourning was complete, she told me, “That was for Lancelot.” My first thought—a Pichushkin-like thought, for which I am not proud—was: Hell, I should have killed that cat years ago!

We are loving gods, you and I, all of us ‘perfect strangers’ in this world. And we need our pets to know, even if only vicariously, that there can be life in this world that experiences comfort and joy and remains forever oblivious to famine and disease and discord and all other theodicies—including, especially, the specter of Death.

And this is why, deep in our hearts, many of us would be torn between picking either the Lab or the baby first. (It is also why we would follow a raving mad serial killer into the woods.) Because while the baby isn’t in on the dirty secret of human existence yet, we know it will be soon enough. But the Lab remains forever blissful and innocent, as are all other creatures great and small—except for man, the only animal which kills for sport.

Well, cats do, too. But as every cat lover knows, felines are just humans with whiskers—an utterly redeeming quality. But I suspect that somewhere in Moscow right now there’s a cat trying to lure a mouse into the woods to cry over his recently deceased master.

Mr. Dampfstain is filling in for columnist Harry S. Iarch, who is on assignment this week trying to lure unsuspecting herpetologists into the bushes of Finlay Park to mourn over the death of his pet iguana.