Sukka 23 a, b

Rabbi Akiva and Rabban Gamliel set up a sukka on a boat.  The sukka blows away with the wind.  "Some sukka," says Rabban Gamliel.  He implies that it should never have been called a sukka, as it could not stand up to the wind.  "Ah," says Rabbi Akiva. "You are mistaken.  A sukka is unfit if it is on land and it cannot stand up to unusually strong winds.  But on the water, a sukka is fit when it can stand up to typical land winds. Also, a sukka is a temporary residence. Thus this sukka was fit."

Much of the remainder of today's daf is devoted to a very disturbing concept: using animals, live creatures, as part of the construction of the sukka.  No tools would be used to attach the animals to the rest of the sukka, thank goodness, but the animals would be secured in place with rope.

First, the rabbis ask whether or not a sukka is truly fit if it is built atop an animal.  The sukka is a temporary structure, after all, but it must last seven days. If we cannot climb onto the animal on the first day of the Festival, how could the sukka be deemed fit?

Next, the rabbis wonder about using an animal as a sukka wall.  They note that animate objects cannot be used to designate alleyways on Shabbat, to mark private domains around wells, to cover graves, or to be used to write gets.  

Of course animals cannot be used as walls!  That is cruel and unnatural.  It would create great distress for the animal.  None of these objections are discussed by our rabbis.  Instead, they are worried about invalidating the sukka.  And that would be because 
1) the animal could die
2) the animal could flee
3) the animal could crouch.
All of these concerns are spoken to when the rabbis explain that the animals would be secured in place from many directions, including from above, by ropes.  Thus the animal might die but could not move.  It could not physically flee.  It could not physically crouch.

The rabbis are unconcerned with the animals necessary suffering.  They are, however, concerned about setting up a situation where someone might die.  They look to the case of a priest who travels and ensures that his wife can eat terumah in his absence by writing a note asking that she not eat terumah from one month before he dies.  He could die at any time, but the presumption is that he is alive until there is conclusive proof of his death.  The rabbis note a similar assumption in the case of a ketubah, where a man ensures that his wife is divorced (and thus need not take part in a levirate marriage) by writing preemptively that he divorces her one hour before his death.  The assumption is that he is alive, however.

I cannot get my head around the insensitivity with which the rabbis discuss their use of animals.  I doubt that they were seriously considering residing in a sukka while listening to an animal die as it was forced to stand as a wall of that sukka.  However, to even discuss such a possibility without any concern for the experience of the animal is disconcerting.  Did everyone feel this way about animals in that time and place?  Did they believe that animals were created to be utilized by humans and thus being a wall was the same as pulling a plough?  I cannot help but notice my disappointment in the rabbis -- and my judgement of a very different social reality.