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Dog abandoned on streets in radiation exclusion zone, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 13 April 2011)
The Tokyo-based news blog Rocket News 24 has been doing some investigative reporting on the fate of animals abandoned in the mass evacuations from the exclusion zone around the irradiated smoking husk of the Fukushima I nuclear power plant. The images they have brought back are unsettling. Is there anything positive to be gained from looking upon these images?
Nobody ever accused a dog or a cow of splitting the atom, so it's not as though this vision of the abomination of desolation can be blamed on them, or that there is a lesson they need to learn, about the error of their ways, their arrogance, their hubris, the empty religion of their technology.
No, the images must be meant for us.
Not forgetting, of course, that we'll never learn, even after it's too late.
Early in April, the reporters visited a cattle ranch in Namie, ten clicks from the plant. This is considered an area of particular risk. The ranch owner and staff had left everything behind and departed for safe refuge, leaving no one to provide water and food for the abandoned animals.
"Here," writes Rocket News 24 reporter Tachyon, "instead of the lively sounds of farmers going about their daily work, the air is filled with the desperate cries of abandoned cattle. Going to the barn to investigate, we found that over half the cattle in every pen were dead, and the rest were letting out heartbreaking cries for help as they stood among the corpses.
"Normally, the cattle are able to use their nose to push a pedal that releases water at a drinking hole in the barn. However, no water came out when we tried for ourselves, suggesting that the water supply has been stopped."
Some local residents told the reporter that while gathering their belongings to get ready to evacuate their own homes, they had tried to supply a little feed and water to the cattle, but that they would be leaving the area within a matter of hours, and there would be no one remaining to continue the effort to ameliorate the suffering of the doomed creatures.
"Now, the starving cattle can only wait for whichever comes to greet them first: the humans that abandoned them, or death."
Abandoned cattle in barn on ranch at Namie, radiation exclusion zone, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 11 April 2011)
Abandoned cattle in barn on ranch at Namie, radiation exclusion zone, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 11 April 2011)
Dead cattle in barn on ranch at Namie, radiation exclusion zone, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 11 April 2011)
Abandoned cow on ranch at Namie, radiation exclusion zone, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 11 April 2011)
A few days later the Rocket News 24 reporters returned to Namie with a rescue team made up of volunteers from several animal protection groups. The purpose of the group's visit was to rescue as many dogs and cats as possible, and transport them by car to refuges beyond the twenty-kilometer exclusion zone.
"As we drove through the town, the surrounding scenery was like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie," reports Tachyon. "Stores lining the streets were all closed. There were plenty of cars everywhere we went, but all were missing their drivers. Not a single person walked the streets, and the only sign of life was a single cow walking in a field.
"As we got further in, we noticed that dogs were roaming freely through the town. It seems that many people evacuated after undoing their dogs’ chains to allow them to move around. However, we also found dogs that had died of starvation, their owners most likely having fled without unchaining them, leaving them unable to move.
"Some of the dogs, seemingly at a loss as to why the people of their town have disappeared, have taken to forming small groups with other dogs and moving together. We saw a small pack of three dogs ourselves as we made our way through Namie.
"When the rescue team would find a dog, they would call out softly and attempt to lure it closer with food. The dog would approach slowly and start eating the food, though most were extremely cautious and would not let the rescue worker touch them. Finally, after spending a good 30 minutes making the dogs feel at ease, they would fasten a leash to their collars and put them in a carrying case to take to the shelter.
"Some dogs were much more easily captured. We found one dog outside of a Family Mart convenience store that responded when commanded to sit and willingly let us put it on a leash.
"By the end of the day, the rescue workers had run out of cages and were forced to leave several pleading dogs behind. Though the workers left them with what food they could spare, we can’t imagine how lonesome it must feel for those dogs to once again watch as people turn their backs and leave them behind."
Member of animal protection rescue team attempts to make contact with dog abandoned on streets of radiation exclusion zone, Namie, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 13 April 2011)
A successful dog rescue, radiation exclusion zone, Namie, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 13 April 2011)
Dog with broken chain, abandoned on streets of radiation exclusion zone, Namie, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 13 April 2011)
Impromptu pack of three abandoned dogs wandering streets of radiation exclusion zone, Namie, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 13 April 2011)
Rescued dogs being examined for radiation by members of animal protection team, exclusion zone, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 13 April 2011)
9 comments:
Odd as it sounds, thank you for this. Other than that, I just don't know what to say, except that the questions you ask and "No, the images must be meant for us" say everything I can think of at the moment.
Thank you, Curtis, for rescuing me from a drive-by dog-meat offering at Minamisoma a few minutes ago.
In the street last night a woman of approx. 68 years of age, give or take a few months, explained to me that the events in Japan are but a small scene of the larger scenario that features the imminent reversal of the Poles, 600 foot tsunamis on the West Coast and so on, leading unto 2012.
"The only safe place is going to be Arizona, you bet," she said.
A young man from Oakland overheard this and mumbled, "I been to Arizona. Brother don't let the sun go down on him in Arizona."
"It's all been written," she went on.
Where, then, if may I ask? I made the mistake of asking.
(Humouring public intensities of this sort can be fraught.)
"From this guy ___ who's on the internet all the time in the public library."
I have sent this along as a link to a couple of organizations we support, Farm Sanctuary and PETA, as well as a few other outlets, including my college's two newspapers. (It will be very interesting to see the response I receive from them; things have changed a lot since I attended college and things are really focused on the "personal" these days, it seems, with a very narrow focus on what that means.) I would also like to post this as a link on my own blog if that's all right with you.
Of course it's all right, Curtis. If there's any point at all in looking upon these images, it's in helping ourselves and others to begin to feel life in all its many surprising and unexpected manifestations, and perhaps good thoughts and good acts among the living will then somehow, somewhere, sometime, follow. Despite everything, even, maybe.
Heartbreaking stuff. Mainstream news has been especially neglectful this time around. I guess it's up to the poets...
Know what you mean, O. Mainstream news is a raging torrent with no mind and once it's swept through a story, there had better not be any details to go back and pick up.
But this side channel rivulet of the great tragedy troubles my sleep. Those animals were once the providers, whether of sustenance or companionship, for the human "masters" who vanished as if they'd been ghosts.
Looking at those cows, the old phrase "to put [something or someone] out [its/his/her] misery" kept popping up in the involuntary part of the thinking apparatus.
Another one, too, even worse: "no mercy".
(I believe that's what sportsmen are meant to show to their opponents... which must mean the animals were never really on "our team" in the first place.)
Terrible stuff.
'Nobody ever accused a dog or a cow of splitting the atom'
For the dogs left behind Tom- this
Devastating innocence.
We owe so much and only keep on taking more. Many days I am ashamed to be a person participating in modern society.
I too would be, if I did... but, curiously, it seems also possible to feel ashamed of it while not participating in it, or participating in it only miminally, and unwillingly, and when there's no way around it.
But it's like the Great Wall. There's no Outside.
Once there might have appeared some way of trying to change it for the better.
To no longer be able to perceive such a way is not only frustrating but shameful.
A great sigh for the fate of that devastating innocence which once had blessed us. When it looks at us from the beseeching distance of the betrayed, there is a sense of desolation... and, yes, shame.
The more stray and abandoned cats show up in the night to beg for food (more all the time, people in bad economic straits are abandoning them wholesale around here), the clearer this becomes.
(Having just interrupted this to put out dinner for a stranger cat who has followed the underground trail to the battered back door.)
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