A Beloved Swan Named Faye Who Lived in an Upstate NY Pond, Killed and Eaten

[Warning: this article contains somewhat graphic description of animal cruelty]

Over the Memorial Day weekend at the Manlius Swan Pond in a Syracuse suburb, New York, USA, three teens hopped a fence overnight, capturing Faye, a beloved Mute swan, brutally killing her.  Faye and Manny, her mate, had four cygnets who were stolen, leaving Manny alone.  Those who took Faye ate her according to reports.  The teens were reportedly hunting and thought she was a very large wild duck.  They said they did not realize the significance of the swans to the village of Manlius.  All of the cygnets were later found and turned over to the Avian biologist, Mike Bean, who holds the contract with the village to care for them.  Bean said the cygnets are in good health.  Swans have been a part of this village since 1905.  Faye and Manny lived at the pond since 2007, each spring hatching and raising cygnets.  As for Manny, left alone to grieve, he will most likely be removed from the pond as he could become combative to the cygnets after losing his mate.

Swans mate for life.  If a mate is lost, the survivor will go through a grieving process like humans do.  Manny will become depressed, stay to himself and sleep more.  Swans typically mourn for about three months; in some cases, they may stop eating, drinking, and die.

The death of Faye received a public outcry.  As an animal welfare advocate and Christian who sees that the Bible teaches we are to be merciful stewards of creation, I struggle greatly with my emotions over this unnecessary tragedy.  I could feel Faye’s terror, pain and struggle as she was held down and decapitated.  I could imagine the fear and chaos this caused her cygnets.  One moment they were nesting with their mother, the next she was torn from them and violently killed in front of them.  Then, they were snatched away from all they knew and taken to places completely foreign to them.  I mourned for Faye and her cygnets.  I mourn with Manny.  I can imagine his grief.  His whole world has changed in an instant.  A public outcry is appropriate.  Yet there are other instances where birds and animals are raised in abhorrent conditions, have their young taken away, and who are killed in unspeakable ways, who do not receive a public outcry.  The world is largely silent about these injustices.  Why is that?

Cognitive dissonance, double-mindedness as the Bible calls it, isn’t anything new to the human race.  It refers to situations involving behavior that is not in alignment with one’s beliefs, attitudes, values, morals, and ethics. It’s literally like having two separate minds holding contradictory thoughts.  The bible tools article at the link above says, “The Greek word translated “double-minded” in James 1:8, dipsuchos, in its literal sense means “double-souled,” like having two independent wills. The words “with no doubting” in verse 6 are translated from the Greek words meedén diakrinómenos, which describes one divided in mind, who wavers between two opinions. …. Double-mindedness occurs in a church member when one has an implicit or explicit knowledge of God’s good instructions, yet deliberately harbors a sin, choosing to conceal it, repress it, or ignore it.”

God wants peace and justice.  Justice is a relational term.  Righteousness, a term related to justice, means to be “rightly-related.” Biblical references to the word “justice” mean “to make right.”  God wants us “to make right” relationships. He calls us to act justly – be rightly-related, make right our relationships – throughout scripture. “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute,” (Psalm 82:3). “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and plead the widow’s cause,” (Isaiah 1:17).  Specifically when applied to our rightly-relatedness to animals, the Bible says a “righteous person has regard for the life of his animal, But even the compassion of the wicked is cruel.” (Proverbs 12:10)  In Hebrew the meaning of wickedness is destroying the purpose or design of what God created.  If we are doing something with our dominion other than the purpose God established for it, then we are doing wickedness. When our relationships with God, one another, the earth and the animals, are not rightly-related, it is wickedness.

At the beginning of Creation, even before sin entered the world, God established what our relationship toward animals should be.  Animals share the sixth day of creation with humans (Gen 1:24–31). In Genesis 2:18–19, Genesis 1:29, animals are not created as resources or food for Adam, but rather companions with Adam.  There was no predation or killing of one another.  So from the beginning, God’s intention for animals and humans was to coexist in harmony as companions with one another with the earth as their shared home. In Genesis 2:15, God placed man in the garden to have dominion over it, to care for or cultivate it and maintain or keep it.  The words care/cultivate in the original language is עבד, transliteration `abad.  It means to labour, work, do work; to work for another, serve another by labour.  The words keep/maintain in the original language is שׁמר; transliteration shamar.  It means to keep, have charge of; to keep guard, keep watch and ward, protect, save life. We get an unmistakable image of the dominion given to us as a responsibility to “serve” and “protect” the garden’s inhabitants and the garden itself. Being made in God’s Image is the embodiment of God in order to care for and watch over that which God created.

Let’s look at peace.  Jesus says:  “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7). “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9). Isaiah tells us in 11:6-9 that one day, God will establish peace such that animals now known for their predation will live with lambs, goats and calves, and little children will lead them; infants will play near cobra’s dens and viper’s won’t bite when they put their hands in their nests!  Verse 9, “They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”One of my favorite verses that reveals God’s heart for peace is His covenant promise to His animals in Hosea 2:18-20:

In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety.  I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.  I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.

Most people would likely agree that justice, love, compassion, and peace are praiseworthy attributes that we each in some sense strive to embody. So what keeps us from exhibiting these virtuous qualities in our attitude toward animals? Double-mindedness.

We love our cats and dogs and other animals we call “pets” (companion animals).  We go to great lengths to care for them, protect them, ensure that they are healthy and flourish.  We see the complexities of animal life through them.  We know animals are sentient, have complex emotions, and that they are more like us than not.  We develop relationships with them, they with us.  They become family.  We wouldn’t think of allowing a situation in which harm could come to them. With our companion animals, we serve the purpose God intended us to serve.

When it comes to our attitude toward other animals, this is not so. Many turn a blind eye to the suffering caused when certain animals are hunted and killed for what humans call “sport.”  All sorts of cruel methods are used – guns, bow and arrow, steel jawed traps, and more. When an animal is taken that has young who are dependent upon their parent(s) for survival, many if not most starve to death. Animals have complex family structures.  When we kill a mate, we condemn the family to a similar fate as these three teens did to Faye, Manny, and their cygnets.  We disrupt the entire family structure.  We cause emotional trauma.  We disrupt a delicate interdependent balance within the relational structure of the family unit – even beyond the family unit in an entire forest community.

Another area where double-mindedness inhibits us from living according to God’s ideal of love and compassion is when we view animals as objects of entertainment. Elephants, dolphins, and orcas that are taken from the wild and forced into captivity in zoos, circuses, aquariums, and other human “entertainment” venues, undergo tremendous pain and suffering.  Family members are often brutally killed in order to take their young and subject them to a miserable life in captivity.  Sometimes, in the example of elephants, entire herds are decimated.  The young that have been stolen have their spirit broken, called “Phajaan” Quote from the article: “These babies will be kept in small crates similar to those found in the intensive pig farming industry. Their feet will be tied with ropes, their limbs will be stretched, they will be repeatedly beaten with sharp metal and other tools, they will be constantly yelled and screamed at, and they will be starved of food. Bull hooks (a tool used in most forms of elephant control) will be used to stab the head, slash the skin and tug the ears.”

 

The same is true when it comes to vivisection.  Animals used in experimentation suffer some of the most cruel torture imaginable.  They endure chemicals being put into their eyes, injected into their bodies, forced down their throats, or forced up their nostrils.  They are addicted to drugs, forced to inhale/ingest toxic substances, subjected to maternal deprivation, deafened, blinded, burned, stapled, and infected with disease viruses.  None can escape.  All are confined to tiny barren cages for the duration of their tortured lives, taken out only for the next experiment, then killed when they are no longer useful for the laboratory’s purposes.

 

Unless we are vegan, our double-mindedness is also at work each time we sit down to eat.  Animals that people eat undergo torture by the billions. In intensive farming practices, or factory farms (CAFOs – Confined Animal Feeding Operations) turkeys, cows, pigs, chickens and others are bred and raised in extreme confinement, often in warehouse-like buildings where they will never experience the outdoors and cannot express natural behaviors. Below are a few examples:

 

 

Animal fur/skin trades are another instance where animals are tortured for human use.  What opened my eyes to the injustices being done to animals in this industry was a video of a coon dog being skinned alive for his or her fur.  Quote from the article at the link:  “There is nothing “natural” about clothing made from animals’ skin or fur. In addition to causing the suffering and deaths of millions of animals each year, the production of wool, fur, and leather contributes to … land devastation, pollution, and water contamination.”

 

Loving companion animals while eating cows/pigs/chickens and other animals; wearing animal skins; visiting Sea World or a zoo; hunting animals; experimenting on animals, are examples of double-mindedness.  If we stop to consider the way animals are mistreated in all the aforementioned ways, the emotional effects of cognitive dissonance or double-mindedness would greatly increase.  In Micah 6:8, the prophet teaches us to connect our faith with our actions, our care for those in need (which should include animals), with our walk with God.  We are “to make right” relationships and be righteous or rightly-related: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

When animals like Faye and Manny and their cygnets cause such a public outcry, it is a message to all of us that something is wrong in the world.  Animals are not being treated rightly.  Every instance of animal cruelty and exploitation should invoke in us an outcry.  God’s very good will is restoration – to “make-right” our relationships with them and the earth.  He wants an end to the violence and merciless acts toward people and animals.

Wherever there is an outcry over injustices done to animals, it is an opportunity to examine ourselves to make sure we are not living double-mindedly (2 Corinthians 13:5; 2 Peter 1:10-11). Those who believe and follow the perfect will of God have a responsibility.  As it says in Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”   By looking to God in this way and allowing Him to transform us, He will renew our minds to a state of single-minded wholeness. We will then be able to walk humbly with integrity, restoring our rightly-related relationships with God, each other, and especially the animals and earth. In fact, all creation is eagerly waiting for us to do so (Romans 8:19).

---

Thank you for reading and following our website.  ~Kathy

Here are two petitions to sign to demand justice for Faye and her family: