- Bobcat kitten: Mommy?
- Bobcat kitten: MOMMY!?
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![[0488] Ruthless?](/comics/2013-06-06-0488-ruthless.png "[0488] Ruthless?")
[0488] Ruthless?
└ posted on Thursday, 6 June 2013, by Novil
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oh man… thats so sad i really didn’t expect that level of saddness from this comic.
Verdauga wrote:
>Plenty of RL sadness in the world, I don’t need more from stuff I read to enjoy
Then I’m afraid you’ll need to shut yourself off from the world and air only children’s show reruns. Drama is a key part in the difference between reading words on a screen or on a page and reading a story. Without it, you have no plot development, no conflict, the characters which should evolve remain flat and linear, the story becomes redundant and boring.
If you cannot handle drama or sadness in a cartoon at this level, in all likelihood you cannot handle it properly at all.
This may seem completely out of the blue, but since this morning when I first read the strip, I’ve been thinking about how a forest ranger looking for the poacher leaving all these dead animals in the forest would react to the fact that said poacher is a squirrel with a gun.
This is an unexpected twist, considering that Woo and other predators never have pangs of conscience over possibly leaving the helpless young of the rodents they eat, childless.
Of course Ruth is only a predator by choice, not by nature, so perhaps that has something to do with her different reaction to the orphaned kits.
I’m going to keep reading, just to see what happens next. Offhand, I’m guessing that Ruth decides to become a vegetarian (or nut-arian, if you like) 😉 but what happens/happened to the kits?
Melkior wrote:
Uh, I meant to say orphaned, not childless.
@ Paeris Kiran: Look up “surplus killing”, it’s a well observed phenomena.
The reasonings as to why they can’t engage in such activities are unfortunately too simplified. Surplus killing will benefit the individual for various reasons. For example, by surplus killing, the predator can choose to only eat the best parts of its prey. Also, each individual has a very small effect on the number of prey animals. Of course, if the whole species engage in surplus killing, that will hurt said species, but individually, that activity in an advantage.
Imagine two carnivores of the same species, well call them A and B. A engages in surplus killing while B does not. Which of those individuals has a behavior more beneficial to it’s species? B does. Which of those individuals are more likely to be able to pass on it’s genes to future generations? Unfortunately, it’s A. So, surplus killing is a behavior that cannot be removed from the gene pool even though it would benefit the species.
I just have to ask:
Inspired by the newest Episode of Game of Thrones?
@ Mike:
BYE then…
And don’t let the door hit you on your way out…
ooohhh, that left me so depressed that even the pink dragon is crying… PD: It´s the first time i don´t have to eat pills after writting here cuz my psicologist took all of them cuz he´s depressed too.
PD: i think ruth´s going to adopt those two… by feeding them with her mother´s meat JAJAJAJAJA!
right, if my psicologist had pills left now i would probably be drugged.
I ate a nut and I liked It! muahahahahahaha…
I’m probably analyzing the art too much but…is that a male kitten and a female kitten there? Love the art!
So Ruth gave back the meat, despite it not fixing anything at all, and ate a nut. 😛
@ Crystalgate:
Excellent reply. I’ve raised chickens and seen this. Foxes will get in, take one with them, and come back through the same route in each night if you don’t plug the hole. A bobcat will kill everything and cache the surplus to eat later (provided it can get back to the cache or remembers where it is–in reality they forget just like squirrels). Raccoons will kill the chickens, eat the crops and other tasty bits, then move on to the next bird if they can grab another, and only stop once they’re stuffed.
@ Cinnamoon:
Shooting and Eating a predator or it’s pups that are begging for it’s life
is entirely different than seeing two kittens crying over their dead mother you just killed,
even if it was self defense and foraging on your part, you still just made two orphans.
I could see Ruth raising the Bobcat kittens.
@ Cinnamoon:
Perhaps she feels bad this time because she didn’t directly kill them. If they died, then she unintentionally and indirectly caused their deaths because she killed their caretaker. With the pups, she was killing them directly.
@ Mr_Nabby:
What a dickish comment to make. I mean….JESUS.
Well now I’m sad.
I feel so sad for two reasons (please don’t down vote me for this):
1) Oh my god this is the saddest thing I have ever seen.
2) I feel HORRIBLE because the first thing I thought of is South Park. Jesus, I hate my mind.
Interesting how many people are upset with Ruth for killing the lynx, but not with predators for kliling prey. Ruth would have been killed if she hadn’t shot the lynx. A typical predator just misses a meal if he does not kill his prey. So if anything, she has the stronger justification.
Some people are trying to say she’s at fault because she doesn’t eat the whole thing, but predators don’t always either (housecats frequently kill birds and don’t eat them, for instance). Others are saying she was too happy, but those people evidently haven’t paid much attention to Woo’s attitude toward his prey, which has been similarly cheerful.
The real reason people are upset is that the writer has shown us the consequences for once, something he doesn’t usually do when a prey animal gets killed. So the situation is basically the same. Only the spin is different.
Ruth finally sees what happens in person to a family when she kills larger predators without seeing the big picture. She realizes that the lynx was probably hunting for her babies and she took that away. She’s probably wondering how many cubs of predators she’s killed have had to go through this and is rethinking her choice to be a predator.
Wow. Okay, first the boner storyline—now we get to see a cute character take a slice out of another cute character’s femur (yeah, they were a red shirt chararcter, but still). It’s like in a year, the comic went from cute, fun, and creative to trying to force shock value over and over between bouts of cute, fun and creative (loved the t-rex comic).
And give me a break—this isn’t like RL “predator-prey” stuff either. These are talking personified animals, and the way Ruth sliced the Lynx’s leg was pretty detailed—more like you’d see on “Dexter” than any National Geographic. Did we really *need* to see that? I can’t blame a few people for comparing it to South Park. It’s fine if you don’t want this to be a fun Calvin and Hobbeseque comic anymore, but it can’t really be successfull as that *and* Happy Tree Friends at the same time.
@ Xezlec:
It has nothing to do with natural killing or even being upset at the characters. I’m mostly disappointed with the artist/author’s approach to it. We get to see the graphic details of a cute talking animal slicing other cute talking animal’s femurs the same way you’d see on something like “Dexter.” It’s not mother nature nor is it even really funny or interesting. It’s just cheap shock value for the sake of it. I’m not voting for this comic anymore.
@ ScreamingMeMe:
OK, but I wasn’t talking about you. In fact, for what it’s worth, I agree with you: the vore stuff in this comic has gotten edgier and edgier (remember “may I like the brainbox clean” not too long ago) and it may be getting a bit much. As for me: it doesn’t bother me. To me, it’s still just a silly comic. But I understand that others may feel more strongly.
Damn Bambi flashbacks… ;n;
Message to all the haters: If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Don’t comment, don’t let the world know. It’s fine to say that you do not like how this arc (and comic) is going, but it isn’t necessary to announce how you’ll stop reading it. Frankly, it’s annoying, discouraging, and no one cares, so why waste extra seconds of your life telling us?
________
Since I have this huge soft spot for felines, all I can say is: those poor, poor, lynxes…. ;__;
Teh kitties 0-0
@ Evil Midnight Lurker: In other words, this squirrel discovered what humans have known all along, bending nature to your will has its advantages.
@ Frozenwolf150:
Ruth does not HUNT for prey as such. Rather, she acts all innocent and then defends herself, preying on her would-be killer. It’s hollow to condemn Ruth for killing and eating the Bobcat when the Bobcat was about to do the same to her! (The fact that the bobcat had a family to feed is IRRELEVANT. Ruth didn’t know that. And for all the bobcat knew, Ruth may have had a family to take care of.)
Granted, what Ruth does is akin to entrapment. But both of them are wild animals and there are examples of this in nature, such as the Anglerfish. It may seem strange for a rodent like Ruth to kill and eat large predators. However, nature does not necessarily adhere to what human beings would consider “proper”. There are cases where animals use tools to get food (such as chimps using sticks to get ants) and exposure to human society has changed the behavior of some animals. And nature is weird sometimes, like the vampire butterfly which seeks out wounded animals to drink blood.
I find your argument that Ruth hunts “for SPORT” to be unfounded. She hunts to survive, because she has to eat and defend herself and it’s all she knows. She may enjoy what she does, but then the wolves and Shadow the fox seemed to enjoy their catch. And Ruth was looking forward to a good, tasty meal. Could she choose smaller prey? She does not exactly choose her prey so much as her prey choose her! And a bobcat is rather small compared to other squirrel predators.
The only aspect of your argument that holds any water is how Ruth only selects a small portion and lets the rest “go to waste”. But there’s no way she could eat all that and she does not choose the size of her prey. And unlike some other predators, I doubt as a youth she was taught how to bury the remainder and come back for it later. (Besides, what she takes should last her for days and a buried carcass would get rancid after a while.)
The fact that Ruth could eat nuts instead of hunting does not support this argument, either. Ruth is a strange nutcase in that she had it in her head that squirrels hunt other animals and the mere idea of eating nuts was foreign to her. In her mind, she HAD to hunt to survive. And she has every right to defend herself.
As for shooting Sandra: We all know that Sandra would try to avoid startling a cute squirrel, much less attack one. So Ruth wouldn’t hurt her. Technically, Ruth only kills in self-defense. Besides, while animals will sometimes attack humans – esp. if threatened or starving – many animals have an instinctual fear of humans – of our scent. We’ve been at the top of the food chain for a LONG time. Sharks have even displayed a general distaste of human blood.
Ruth felt BAD about the orphan kittens. She FEELS and it changed her! A wolf, on the other hand, would have gobbled up the kittens with no remorse. Survival of the fittest.
Hey, even people on death row have family that still loves them. 😉
What, did only two people see that south park episode? Does this remind NOBODY else, especially those ten who downthumbed, about it?
Why is everyone assuming that Ruth was going to let this go to waste? Because she only took a small portion? For all any of you know, she was planning to get the rest later. Yes, squirrels are normally nut eating bushy-tailed masters of being cute, but Ruth is a nutcase. Just like humans who only eat plants. The reason she has such a strong reaction to this kill as opposed to wolves is simple: She’s probably never made a kill, collected her meat, and was about to leave when a couple of her prey’s children came out and went all Lion King on her.
I am surprised the squirrel wasn’t harmed by the recoil and blast from the gun.
Some times you’re the bat, some times you’re the ball. Never bring teeth and claws to a gun fight.
Crestlinger wrote:
Objects don’t make monsters; it’s the choices people make that makes them monsters. The pistol gives Ruth some options she didn’t have available before, but it was Ruth that made the choice among those options. What she learns (or doesn’t learn) from the consequences of this choice will influence her future choices.
I think it’s a bit early to be calling Ruth a monster.
my question is how did she cut the meat she has no knife!?!?
Ooooh…she killed their mom…
@ Idon’tspeakscottish:
I don’t think Ruth not being happy about killing the Lynx would be much of a comfort to the kittens
@ Vhaeraun:
You clearly have no idea how far in advance he makes even individual strips, let alone ones that are a part of a clearly pre established storyline that would obviously have been thought out to completely before the first comic was even drawn.
@ Wolfking_Warrior:
Yep, and it’s also Ruth and less.
Am I making any sense?
Classical dilemma:
Being killed or orphanize the kids of your potentional killer.
Keep in mind that those sweet, cuddly bobcat kittens will be two additional bobcats hunting down the wood’s animals in less then 6 months.
But…until then…they’re soo cute and cuddly…
I hated this squirrel since the beginning: it’s too much like Tom and Jerry, or other such nonsense, where the prey animal is able to beat the crap out of the predatory animal, despite the fact that in real life carnivores are far more intelligent than herbivores. I hope she gets karma for trying to go against the natural order of things, much like Tweety did earlier in this comic. Also, it really disturbs me when cats die, it hits WAY to close to home for me.
Don’t worry though, it’s only a few pages that bug me out of a few hundred pages that are filled to the brim with awesomeness, so I’m definitely still following this comic and voting for it when I remember to.
ha ha ha this is hillarious =D what a twist of luck! more food arrived! yummy!
Well, aaaaaaaaand now I am depressed 🙁
That squirrrel is a bitch if I saw her I ripped of her head and eated it fuck you squirrel I will get you poor lynx
Poor lynx I hate squirrels
Sincerely , I was also shocked by this scene , there is a reason I cry while I watch bamby , and that I hate Hannibal Lecter , but … Sandra and Woo Is a great comic , and there is no way I will stop reading it for a strip !
Maybe a trigger warning next time would be nice … there is not really any gore I know , but I wasn’t prepared for this kind of scene in this comic so I think that’s what make it extra shocking .
That being said , I always look forward to reading your next comic , so keep up the good work !
@ Cinnamoon:
Because she ate them before they had the chance to do their puppy faces
@ Renate:
I generally agree with your comments, and I don’t expect the author to do what I want in their comic, it was just very unexpected to see and unfortunately was pretty much a trigger for a rather unpleasant mental condition I have, which also sparked my thoughts on the matter.
Wow, I can’t believe I finally reached the end ( so far ) in about a week! Anyway, this is very sad. I hope Ruth decides to help the kits, as long as she doesn’t offer them any lynx meat….. 0-0 Maybe she will ask Sandra to take them somewhere.
@ vain:
It’s a good thing that she has consciousness. If she was a realistic predator, she might go for kittens (or left them to die) without second thought.
Isn’t that ironic that we haven’t blast eachother with nukes yet.