Hunks of Hide
Am I my brother's
keeper?
— Genesis 4:9
Know why Osama bin Laden got so mad at the world? According
to the Wall Street Journal, he was
the 17th of 51 children.
Ooh, the hand-me-downs! Ooh, the fights over who got the
last meatball! Think how long he had to wait for his turn to ride in the front
seat!
Sibling rivalry is rampant and powerful. Thank goodness its
root cause, aggression, doesn't often explode into something like terrorism.
But it's certainly a universal problem among brothers and sisters.
Childhood can be like a blend of old sitcoms: the Smothers
Brothers line, "Mom always liked you best!" and Batman: "BIFF!
POW! BAM!"
Two sisters I know once came to blows over who could make
their nostrils flare the widest. Two brothers had to put on boxing gloves to
settle their differences without a trip to the ER. Parents consider fire hoses
and tear gas to break up squabbles.
Our Dad used to pack us in the car and drive around and
around Boys Town in west Omaha. Why? To warn us humorously where we would go if
we didn't shut up and learn to get along.
Now that I'm a mom, I see why that's so important. But the
fighting goes on here, too: even in our back pasture.
It started when we gave our horse Zippy a baby brother,
Billy. He came with a set of diapers. Diapers? For a horse? "Neigh!"
you say.
No, the diapers were to wrap around Billy's shins in case of
cuts. Why might there be cuts? Because they're both geldings. And boys will be
boys.
They have plenty of food and plenty of space. There are no
girl horses around to impress, although that's a "fuhgeddaboudit" for
geldings anyway. But we still figured they'd fight.
Right off the bat, Zippy put his neck over Billy's.
Protecting his younger brother, his "mane" man? Not exactly.
The neck-over-neck treatment continued for a week. They
walked side by side. They grazed with heads just inches apart. Zippy began to
nudge Billy constantly, and herded him away from neighbor horses and
passers-by.
These two males were so close, I thought maybe we had a
"situation."
But then my daughter Neely, a teenage veteran of peer
pressure wars, saw it for what it was. "Zippy is trying to keep Billy for
himself," she said. "He's bossing him around."
The nudges turned into nips. Zippy would rear back and
"pretend kick" with his sharp hooves.
One morning, a wide strip of Billy's skin and hair was
missing across his forehead. It looked like a Native American headband of
exposed skin. Ouch!
Zippy stood off in the corner, looking guilty. After
scolding the 1,200-pound naughty boy, I gave him a "time out" in another
paddock. I even turned on Christian radio in the barn, hoping it would soothe the
savage beast.
But the next day, there were more hunks of hide ripped from
Billy's shoulders. And the next, hunks were missing from his hips. He was
literally ripped to shreds.
But then one day, new hunks of hide were missing . . . this
time, from Zippy! Now it was Billy off in the corner, in trouble.
They kept ripping skin off each other senselessly for weeks.
Then it hit me: I've done the same thing, lots of times. All
of us have. We try to herd each other to show who's boss. When we don't get our
way, we rip hunks of hide out of each other with cutting remarks and verbal
jabs. Sometimes, the fight turns physical.
When humans carry out acts of mass murder and terrorism
against each other, we see aggression which far surpasses anything animals would
ever do. It's a shameful reminder of how far short we've fallen from the goal
of taking care of each other.
Zippy and Billy are just horses — dumb, brute beasts. They
go by instinct, not reason. But guess what? These big, strong brothers don't
fight anymore. They worked it out. They learned to live with each other in
peace.
So what's our excuse?
None. Maybe that's a lesson for each of us, in our herds,
with our sisters and brothers. To be their keepers, not their attackers.
Instead of ripping hunks of hide out of each other, let's
learn to . . . hold our horses. †
