(Freya Hutton / Fourth Estate)

Seeing our world through “animal” eyes

BY FREYA HUTTON, CONTRIBUTOR

Last year Mason’s Fairfax campus was visited by the famous Georgina, a red coated male fox who wooed the hearts of students and faculty alike.

While discussion surrounding Georgina continued for weeks, expressed through heartfelt
Instagram posts and Reddit comments, it inevitably culminated in a singular sobering moment.

Confirmed on Nov. 20, 2024, Georgina had been struck dead by a car outside Rappahannock Parking deck.

Despite the value placed on Georgina’s life and the shrine which appeared following his death, neither the university nor the student body sought to engage in any act beyond remembrance. I acknowledge this not to re-memorialize Georgina, but to reckon with a fault ascribed within our university’s various forests, conservation efforts and “animal” celebrities. Despite our efforts for environmental conservation, we have failed to protect and properly value the “animals” which inhabit our campus.

“Animal,” in its modern terminology, has been used to describe anything from lizards to mammals. However, this term is fundamentally rooted in a desire to separate ourselves from them. By classifying most other living beings as “animals,” we’ve resided ourselves to our own completely singular perspective. As a result, our current environmental endeavors often fail to even acknowledge the perspective of these “animals.” Quite simply, if we’re going to protect them, we should start listening.

From small critters to larger fauna, the impact of animals on campus may seem minute, but the research speaks for itself. Interaction and correlation with wildlife has shown substantial benefit to student health, happiness and even success.

Despite the proven benefits, and Mason’s own attempts to integrate wildlife into our campus through the various forested patches and open gardens sequestered across Mason, the university has never engaged in any substantial action to protect these “animals.”

Across every on-campus environmental endeavor the university has engaged in, there remains a complete lack of acknowledgement from Mason of even the possibility of wildlife encounters, let alone the active reality of daily wildlife appearances students currently experience.

Over the past semester, through consistent and extended interaction, I became what could only be considered friends with a female doe living with the geese by Mason Pond. I came to call her Dolly.

Though I expect Dolly to be less than five years of age, constant human interaction has softened her resistance to industrialism. No longer afraid of leaving the forests of Mason, she wandered the streets of campus, yearning to understand.

This understanding quickly became the basis of our relationship. As I taught Dolly to
stay out of the street and off sidewalks, she enlightened me to her experiences.

The wonder and multiplicity by which Dolly unapologetically approached every entity of her environment bewildered me. In interacting with Dolly, I was forced, not only to unpack the barriers I had built between me and the “animals” in my environment, but the very means by which I approached the world.

Dolly continues to encourage a sense of wonder and exploration within me — one entirely bound by her reactions to the foreign world we have constructed for her.

Inevitably, Dolly, along with every other “animal” which calls our campus home, has revealed a lesson we could all learn: empathy. The only difference between the way “animals” and ourselves approach the world is through wonder and kindness.

Our local fauna are not perpetuated by the same stoic cynicism we often attribute to ourselves. “Animals,” as we have chosen to call them, present an opportunity to see our world through inquisitive, empathetic and adaptive eyes. Neither Georgina nor any animal should see this campus as a threat to their lives.

As climate change and environmental degradation continues to strip away the land these creatures once called home, it becomes our duty to understand we are the cause of this disaster.
We must welcome these “animals” into our community, treat them with kindness and understanding, and reconcile that our environment would not be in such jeopardy if we had only started caring sooner.