Bill Dalton: The Turtle Killer
"Why is it so easy to kill? ... Because it is," columnist Bill Dalton writes.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.
A few weeks ago, I killed a snapping turtle.
For some reason, it still haunts me, even after a lifetime of killing. It wasn’t killing a turtle that bothered me — it was the act of killing a living thing.
In my mind, I’d justified taking its life. I’d just stocked our farm pond following a bad winter kill. The fingerling fish were expensive, more than $3 apiece, and I’d spent a lot of time and trouble restocking the pond.
Snappers eat small fish. So, he had to go. As the turtle raised its huge head out of the water, I shot him with a powerful pellet gun.
He sank out of view, and seconds later I saw a few bubbles break the surface of the water. I think I got him.
But the realization he was now fish food at the bottom of the pond troubled me. I’m still not sure why.
Perhaps because I knew the turtle was just being a turtle, part of the natural order of things, a small link in a long food chain. Did he deserve to die?
As I’ve gotten older and closer to death, I’ve noticed a reluctance to kill things — even a bug crossing my path — which seems silly. There are billions of bugs, but if they’re not invading my home or biting me, why kill them? Just because I can?
I’d stopped deer hunting for similar reasons. For years, I’d justified killing deer as simply a harvest, not unlike gathering the crops each fall.
I’d also rationalized that there are too many deer, causing accidents on the highways, raiding farmers’ cornfields and damaging manicured suburban landscaping.
The herd needs thinning, like a garden needs weeding.
But now killing deer makes me uneasy for reasons I don’t fully understand. Is it a fear of my own death? Or as I’ve gotten older, is it a greater respect for life?
As I walk the fields at dusk, the deer that sneak from the woods see me and run, even though it’s not hunting season and I’m unarmed. They naturally fear humans. They should.
As a child growing up on a fruit farm, I shot and killed hundreds of birds — starlings and grackles, not songbirds — as they ate the cherries on our trees. My father appreciated my marksmanship.
The birds were literally taking food out of my family’s mouths. It was us against them, and I had the gun. I killed them because that’s what animals higher up the food chain do. I was the ultimate predator.
It all felt perfectly natural. Now it doesn’t.
Yet for others, killing is still easy, like for the Hamas fighters who murdered 378 Israelis Oct. 7, 2023, during the Nova Music Festival massacre; or the Israelis who leveled Gaza and killed thousands of Palestinians in retaliation; or the Russians who destroy apartment buildings in Ukraine; or the Ukrainians who target non-military buildings in Russia, or the Iranians who shoot at commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, or bomb civilian infrastructure in Middle Eastern countries, or the Americans who blow up boats in the Caribbean carrying suspected drug smugglers.
Killing in wars is justified. On the battlefield, it’s kill or be killed. But killing innocents in terrorist attacks or intentionally targeting civilians — once considered a war crime — is now commonplace.
So are the almost daily random acts of violence, active shooters and mass murders in America. Nothing out of the ordinary anymore.
Kristopher Karolkiewicz woke up July 24 in Grand Haven Township and fatally shot his wife, Amanda, and their six children, ages 5 to 15, before taking his own life.
It’s still troubling me that I killed a turtle. How does someone kill their own children?
We feel terrible hearing such news, shaking our heads, trying to understand.
Why is it so easy to kill?
Because it is.
— Bill Dalton is a former reporter and editor for The Kansas City Star and worked for several Michigan newspapers. He spends summers on the family farm near Fennville. His book “The Bank Game” — a crime thriller — is available from Amazon along with “Dalton’s Bend.”
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