Sue Coe interview

I want to ask you one last question. Why are animals important?

I think it’s like looking at all the stars—if you look at that, and you look at all the universes, and the universes in the universes, and the spiral of the arm of the galaxy we’re on, and then you look at all the creatures and all the variety, you see that it almost melts the brain—the beauty of all these creatures, and all these forms, and all these rocks, and air. Everything about the earth is beautiful, it’s so beautiful. Every speck of starlight, every speck of stardust that makes plants and makes ants and makes worms and makes whales—it’s such a gift to even be alive here to see this.

It’s awe, and I feel awed every time I see my dogs looking at me—and they’re not my dogs, they’re just dog creatures, dog persons—and I realize what communication we have, or what communication we all have with each other. It seems like it’s some kind of paradise. And so to see that being hurt—it’s just like the worst wound in your soul that you can imagine, to see that being hurt. And once you start to see the hurt, it becomes almost unbearable. You see so much hurt of all this beauty. And then you realize about human hubris—that the oceans are turning acid, but acid creatures will form long after we’ve gone. Life will move on again.

And this is some gift we’ve been given, you know. I think the reason we’re here is just to protect it a bit. Protect it slightly, and be protected as well. Because if we look at the animals we share our lives with, how protective they are, how amazing they are . . .

That’s what it means to me—it means we’re the luckiest creatures, because we’re born on this planet, Planet Ocean. To see all this—to see the sparkle of it all—to know it’ll continue on, no matter what, in different forms. I wish everyone felt that way. Maybe we all have the potential to feel that way. But certainly, the murder of other beings isn’t helping anyone.