No More Calamari For Me (Update: Jully 27, 2008)
In one of the most fascinating pieces I have seen on tv so far this year, Nova’s Kings Of Camouflage features Giant Cuttlefish off the coast of Australia. When the smaller males wee unable to enter the mating grounds- patrolled by large roughneck males surrounding the female (sound familiar?)- the undersized male undergoes a remarkable transformation, instantly transgendering from male to female to bypass the surly guys. Marine biologists will also tell you that Coral Reef fish often change sex in the course of their lifetime.
Lucky for me, I’m not a seafood fan. And whenever I’m in the ocean, I (like Kevin James) also scream like a little girl the moment my feet touches anything other than sand. Unfortunately, I have consumed calamari, and I’m stopping from this point onwards. Our world is filled with so many fascinating creatures, it seems indicative of a dearth in the human imagination when the greatest tribute we could pay that fascination is to chop it up, fry it, and stick it in our tummies.
I have often heard that to be an “animal lover” is a Western concept. That is inaccurate. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn prefaces his Gulag Archipelago by recounting the story of excavators at the Kolyma River discovering a fish tens of thousands of years old. Upon finding it alive, they immediately tossed it on the barbie and chowed down. While traveling in rural China, I myself had the great entertainment of watching white American tourists sitting down at restaurants, expecting to feast on Chicken Chow Mein and Pu Pu Platter. To their chagrin, the entire table was loaded with twelve different colors of steam vegetables and soy. Devout Buddhists, if they are truly so, are staunch vegetarians as well.
I want to be honest: I am a social carnivore, and will eat beef and chicken once or twice a month. Whenever I live alone, it’s been a round-the-clock vegetarian diet. I simply can’t justify compassion for certain cuter animals over other “utilitarian” animals like chickens and cows. At the same time however, though all god’s creations deserve equal kindness, multiply any of them by 1000, and most of us will call the exterminator.
Garden shrews get basketed across the street from my house to be released into the conservation area. I always bring bugs outside my home. Spiders get undisturbed residence. (I consider it proactive decorative measures for Halloween.) Moths, of course, fly around with a contract on their heads and get whacked on the spot. Nobody seen anything, nobody heard nothing.
I am in a state of wonder at God’s creations. But I’m sorry, when it comes down to my fuzzy pink sweater and that good-for-nothing wool-munching punk butterfly, I instantly transform into a wiseguy with a swat.
I saw the cuttlefish program and couldn’t hardly believe what I was seeing. Utterly astonishing, perhaps the most amazing animal kingdom sort of thing I’d ever witnessed. I mean, did you see them strobing for god’s sake?!?
When I undertook my weight loss/get in shape agenda this year, I transformed my diet and have learned to love fruits and veggies as never before. I do not, however, think that I could ever be totally vegetarian and be happy about it. Sometimes nothing will do but a little animal or marine protein.
As for reconciling my conscience with eating animals, maybe it depends on one’s perspective. I grew up in the country here in Texas, with farm animals all around and let me tell ya’, that experience will eradicate any ethical misgivings one might otherwise have about slaughtering and consuming said same critters. A chicken, for instance, has to be one of the dumbest, self-centered, cruelest creatures on earth; in packs they are homicidal, pecking weaklings to death unmercifully, and they will eat almost anything, including offal, insects and each other.
Cattle are only slightly less stupid and more benign, but I can’t think of anything they are good for other than filling the refrigerators and freezers of the world. Cattle are ruled by two thoughts and two thoughts only: “Can that thing over there eat me, and if not, can I eat it?” They don’t give a rip whether they’re in a pasture, a feedlot or your parlor as long as they have something to eat and lots of it. While a cow is eating it is wishing it had more to eat. And if they ran unfettered and uncomsumed, the earth would be coated in a three-feet thick crust of their manure and the atmosphere brown with their methane, so prodigious and unmannered are their bowels.
And don’t even let me get started on pigs.
No, eschewing beef, chicken or pork for any reason having to do with ethics or animal rights is not only pointless, it’s silly. The only legitimate reason to leave them out of your diet is because they are such disgusting creatures.
Bon apetit.
>Cattle are ruled by two thoughts and two thoughts only: “Can that thing over there eat me, and if not, can I eat it?” They don’t give a rip whether they’re in a pasture, a feedlot or your parlor as long as they have something to eat and lots of it.< So Sherri, you have officially stamped and sealed the observation "you are what you eat." Because let me tell ya, there are a lot of folks who choke down beef who think EXACTLY that way.
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I'm actually caught in between. I want to learn how to be a good cook. I was cleaning and trussing a young chicken the other night using an Emeril recipe. And I seriously got lightheaded, because the joints were delicate, I was thinking, how young was this chicken. And I almost stopped doing it.
I doubt I'll ever do that again. And if Bob asks me to cook him a young chicken, I'll totally hate him for being such a meanie.
Nothing beats the French eating Ortolan:
http://www.the-two-malcontents.com/2007/09/09/only-the-french-put-napkin-over-head-insert-songbird-into-mouth-enjoy/
Whenever I see something like this, I think about the Clash song “somebody got murdered” (“I’ve been very hungry… but not enough to kill”)
All I can say about beef eating is that you should do it if you like it. For me, it’s more a health issue than an ethics issue. But whatever it is, my opinion has always been “we;;, it’s not THAT delicious, that it was worth a death.” But that’s just me.
Somewhere, a chick pea perservation society probably wants my head on a stick!