The Prime Minister and Me

When I was thirteen, I took on the prime minister of Australia. I had forgotten about this early attempt of mine to set things right in the world. But a few weeks ago, my mother gave me a box of my childhood papers. And in that box, I found a copy of a letter. As soon as I saw it, I remembered how mad I had been when I sent it.

They were killing rabbits in Australia. And only because there were too many of them. I had read about this in The Weekly Reader—the way kids got news back in my day. I remember how I had visualized the slaughter of such gentle animals. And how these pictures in my head had kept me awake at night.

But the story was bigger than rabbits. There were also too many kangaroos. And the prime minister was making plans to slaughter them, as well.

Dear Prime Minister, I wrote, This is a letter of complaint from America. I will be blunt and say this right out! I think it is perfectly absurd to kill innocent animals.

Animals should be killed only for food, I explained, and not a bit more than is needed.

I was helpful. I suggested that the prime minister solve his rabbit problem by supplying the whole world with Easter rabbits.

And I was pre-emptive—If you start killing kangaroos like you are killing rabbits, you will receive another letter of this kind.

Perhaps, I thought, this would keep the prime minister up at night—worrying about my next letter.

I softened my tone at the end—Please send me an answer for this letter so that I may obtain your ideas on this matter. Thank you very much for your bother concerning this matter.

Back then, you could save money if you sent a trans-Atlantic letter by surface mail on a ship. But the lives of rabbits, and maybe kangaroos, were on the line. So I wrote my letter on thin, translucent airmail paper. It crinkled as I stuffed it into a blue-tinted envelope marked Par Avion.

I waited a week before I started checking the mailbox for a reply.

But I never heard from the prime minister of Australia.

And then I forgot about him and the rabbits and the kangaroos.