We live in an anthropologically strange moment in time where, at least in some societies, many people can go very long periods of time without personally having to kill anything that isn't some variety of small arthropod. Come to think of it, I can go a long time without needing to kill a bug anymore as well.

If you aren't used to it, being directly responsible for the death of a mammal or bird can be rather shocking. We just aren't used to seeing things like that die violently; the weird flat look of a dead body, that strange creeping sense that I did this and I really definitely can't take it back, it gets under the skin a bit. I remember the first time I helped slaughter a pig from said swine being alive and grunting to being roasted, and just how deeply unsettling it was how long the animal spasmed after it died. It was definitely dead; we shot it right through the brain then cut its throat basically to the spine, and it still took over a minute to stop moving - and the amount of blood was simply unreal. Seeing something that falls even vaguely into the 'like us' category turn into what is unmistakably a pile of dead flesh is, I think, inherently concerning when not accustomed to it.

The really astonishing thing is how fast one does habituate though. Next year at pig slaughtering time, it was just a mildly unpleasant feature of the morning's work.