After I hung up with Dennis, one thing he said stayed with me.

Dennis is 88 years old and has been racing pigeons since he was fourteen. During our conversation I asked him what he had learned after doing this for so long.

His answer was simple.

He said that over time he realized pigeons aren’t machines.

Later in the conversation he also said something else that kept echoing in my mind:“If they did good for me, I kept them until they died.”

Those two ideas sitting next to each other made me start thinking about how often our care for animals is tied to usefulness.

Working animals. Hunting. Factory farming. Zoos. Animals in entertainment. Racing pigeons.

Even something like animal shelters overflowing with dogs can trace back to the same pattern — when animals stop fitting into the role we’ve created for them, they’re often discarded.

Maybe I’m noticing it more lately because of where I’ve been and the conversations happening around me. I was recently at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival watching the documentary Trade Secret, and there were a lot of discussions around wolf conservation and reintroduction. Back in Los Angeles, there are protests outside the zoo most weekends.

Different stories. Different contexts.

But when you start paying attention, you begin to see how this inherited relationship with animals shows up everywhere.

This short reflection is me thinking through that tension — between recognizing that animals aren’t machines, and the many systems we’ve built that still treat them like they are.

Sometimes a random conversation in a parking lot reveals more than you expect.

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