Bear cubs were doomed by logic over compassion

It’s a fact of life that animal babies are cuter by a long shot than people babies.

You may argue the point but there is no comparison between a wrinkly, drooling, crying, pooping, all-round bad-looking human baby and a fuzzy, helpless, mewing kitten, puppy or bear cub.

You can snuggle animal babies. All you can do with human babies is change their diapers.

Maybe that’s why we get so angry when we think an animal baby has been treated poorly. The news that two tiny bear cubs — all fur and fat feet, their eyes not even open yet — were “put down” instead of being sent to a refuge was bound to affect a lot of people emotionally.

From my vantage point, those two little guys deserved better. To hell with worries about whether they’d make it, whether they could be released into the wild later on, whether they’d somehow disturb the balance in their new environment.

We should have tried. They had at least a chance of survival and we didn’t allow it.

Maybe it was a mistake to remove the cubs from their den after loggers unintentionally ruined it (not to mention passing them around afterward to small children like plush toys). But, maybe, the mistake could have been corrected with a little less urgency to do the “logical” thing.

Really, what was the rush? Twenty minutes — not much time to wait before taking out the needles. The wildlife biologist, and the B.C. Wildlife Park, could surely have picked up the phone and looked for a better solution. But they deal in well-intentioned logic; their considerations are for the bigger picture, while the rest of us struggle in the moment.

When animal babies, or animals of any age for that matter, are in trouble, our protective instinct kicks in. If a cat is stuck up a tree, if a pelican is drenched in oil, if a whale is stranded on a beach, we’re there with fire trucks and volunteers and medical teams, sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars.

It seems a contradiction that we slaughter livestock for food and kill wildlife for fun without a twinge of conscience yet so readily spring to the defense of an animal in distress.

That’s not wrong. We are sentient beings ruled as much by passion as we are by reason. We tread a delicate balance between the two.

I reject the idea that we should place all our sympathies with other humans and stop worrying so much for the animals we share this planet with, any more than we should care only about those close to home.

It’s hard to draw boxes around how we feel. Watching a beloved pet die can’t compare to watching a parent or friend die, but, having done both, I can say that just as there are no limits to how much we can love, there are no limits to how much we can hurt.

Logically speaking, there are lots of black bears left. The species will go on as before. That doesn’t diminish the sadness we feel for those two cubs as individuals.

Maybe it’s unfair to vilify those who made the decision, but no one can be blamed for questioning the decision itself. Logically speaking.