No stranger to a gutted deer carcass hanging in our family shed or my grandfather's habit of neutering pups by sticking their heads in his hunting boots and chopping off their private parts with his fishing knife — I grew up believing myself more tough-skinned than most of my animal-loving college school chums. But I was not.
One balmy night I was cycling across campus to a friend's party at which we were going to indulge our favorite pastime — not drugs or drinking, but singing. I was singing as I cycled across gravel roads near the remote science labs and the agricultural buildings. At first when I saw the wire pen of small dogs racing toward the fence, their snouts thrown back, their voices raised to join mine, I did not notice anything odd because my own singing filled the still, pastoral evening air. Crickets and katydids chattered and I sang all the louder, expecting by the time I reached the beagles that we'd all make a mighty animal chorus.
I cycled faster so as to reach the pups before their howls died down, and I sang out happily, inviting them to harmonize. At last I was within hearing range. The beagles excitedly pressed their black noses against their high fence, heads upraised.
And then I realized something horrible, something that made me stop mid-song. Silence. The beagles did not sing with me. Though their bodies trembled, their snouts were lifted, veins and tendons straining inside their throats, there was not a single sound, except the shuffle of their small paws. Mute. Every single beagle was mute.
This realization so shocked me that I skidded on the gravel. In an instant the bicycle and I turned top-over-end several times before the mangled machine and I shuddered to the ground. How long I lost consciousness I'll never know; but when I awoke, I lay gashed and bleeding from my forehead, my hands and arms, my legs and thighs where gravel and broken spokes had slashed the skin. Moving gingerly, I made certain there were no broken bones, but I was dazed and nauseated, signs of a slight concussion. I lay still, hoping someone else might bicycle by this remote path.
It was dark now and the only light was from the few spotlights guarding the dog pen. Hearing the silent shuffling and leaping of the dogs, I dazedly realized these must be laboratory animals. I'd heard rumors about experiments on campus with laboratory mice or beagles made to inhale huge doses of smoke in experiments to test effect of tobacco on lungs. Other experiments were whispered to be even more grisly — genetic tests, organ transplants.
Next to the fence, several dozen beagles stood sentry, studying me closely in the most terrible silence I have ever heard. As I lay eye-level with the quiet beagles, the thought occurred to me that after some healing, I would be fine, but not so these laboratory dogs. Perhaps it was the lapse of consciousness or a new consciousness, but dictionary words began echoing in my shaken brain, words that at first seemed like nonsense. Mutt — slang for dog or mongrel, simpleton, stupid person. Mut — mutilated or mutual. Mutant — to be changed or altered. And then the word I'd learned in anthropology class: mutatis, or necessary changes.
In my daze I couldn't quite put it all together, except to understand that because these dogs were considered stupid or less than human, all ethical considerations were cast aside to make some necessary change. Scientists were making mutants of other animals in our mutilations. And weren't we also somehow changing ourselves, not necessarily for the best?
All I knew for sure was that I was changed that night with the beagles — and it was not just skin-deep. While my own skin had been wounded, I had not lost my voice as these beagles had when their vocal cords were slashed. Why silence these friendly little dogs — to keep them from alerting the campus as to any other experiments performed upon them? In this remote area of the campus, who was there really to disturb?
They couldn't even whimper without their vocal cords. But through their eyes and expressions, the beagles could still communicate, still commiserate with my wounds. I crawled over to the beagles. It was such a still and beautiful night, with only crickets singing. As if one body, all the beagles quietly lay down on their haunches to gaze at me. This close I could see the neat rows of stitches running like zippers along the dogs' bellies. With some pain I lifted my arm and stretched my fingers through the chain link fencing. Tenderly, a dozen tongues lapped at my bleeding fingers and arm, soothing me. It was their only way left of speaking with their tongues — and it was a song whose kindness and beauty ran along the length of my body.
For a long time, the beagles comforted me — even though I was part of a human species who was returning pain for their devotion. I will never forget their creature comfort. There was something exchanged between my body and those dogs that night — a simple kindness that is a wider territory than just human love. Dragging my broken bicycle and myself to a main street, I caught a ride to the health center for emergency care. Aside from the gravel imbedded in my knee and a few scars, my body healed quickly, but I was haunted then as I still am today by those laboratory dogs.
Often I would cycle past those beagles during my college years and bring them dog treats. There was nothing else I could do but abide with them and hope that I returned to them some part of the comfort they had offered me that quiet night. This was before any animal-rights movement or animal-liberation armies would enter laboratories and rescue the broken, mangled and bewildered animals from their scientifically sanctioned nightmares. This was a time when the mainstream still believed we had the right to torture animals so we could discover how to heal ourselves. Much has changed since that night in 1970, but there are still today countless laboratory animals enduring unimaginable tortures. When I think of these animals sacrificed, I remember as if in elegy a quiet night and even quieter dogs.
Brenda Peterson is a novelist and nature writer, author of more than 12 books. Her new memoir Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals is from W.W. Norton. She also wrote “A mermaid’s hideaway” for UnderWire.
