Ode to Animals:Part 2
This post is Part 2 of my Ode To Animals, a spin off from a series of blogs related to Matthew Scully’s book, Dominion*. You can read Part 1 here.
In high school, I dated Nathan, a member of my graduating class, who owned pet deer. He was and is a nice guy all around, but I think the deer gave him a few extra points in my eyes. If he had owned something more exotic—a pet pygmy hippo or something like that—I may have married him.
In college, my roommate, Lydia, was very west coast, very earthy, very conscious. Lydia ate a lot of awful smelling, squishy tofu and drank weird health shakes, but for the life of me, I can’t really remember if she was more of a humanitarian meat eater or a vegetarian. It wouldn’t surprise me if Lydia was a vegetarian because one of the reasons I was drawn to her was her calm, laidback demeanor as she tackled world issues, writing journalistic articles about the struggles of third world countries that would’ve had me ranting like a crazed auctioneer and waving my hands in pandemonium.
One of my other roommates, Becca, who now employs her tattoos and gauged ears in being the fantastic mother of a child with a challenging illness, became a vegetarian when we were in college. It had the potential to ruin our 2 a.m. Taco Bell runs, but I’m proud to say, we overcame with the help of refried beans as a replacement protein source. Still crappy-for-you food, but crappy-for-you minus the inhumanity.
In other news, out the back picture window of our college apartment we could see cows just beyond the fenceline and buffalo down the road from them. I’d never owned much leather (more because of expense than moral conviction), but at some point while living there, I decided leather—when you really stop and think about it—is a little bit creepy. Perhaps it was one of those previously mentioned telepathic cows that finally got to me.
My senior year, I got in a series of debates with this guy named Sean who I hung out with even though he was 8 years older than me and the supervising professor of the program where I lived in a southside Chicago homeless shelter. I remember the first time Sean brought up vegetarianism. He was only considering it at the time. He presented an argument mostly of conscience over tea (not coffee) at a bookstore on 95th Street. His motivation didn’t appeal to my twenty-one year old ideals at the time. Didn’t God tell people they could go ahead and eat meat? What else was there to say about it then? Now back to these homeless people…
One of my most fabulous students, Rosa, was also a vegetarian. Rosa is special on her own, but I give her extra distinction for owning Wrigley’s sister puppy, Annie. (Annie, by the way, is much more sane than her clinically psychotic brother.) Rosa was more socially conscious at 16 than most people are at 60, a product of both her intelligence and her parents—I suspect—who have escaped the hazards of conventional life by living out in the Concord countryside and working for themselves at a variety of crafts they are passionate about. Rosa is in her third or fourth year at U of M and stays in close enough touch that when Justus was born, she and her mom came to my house, bringing him a really cool geometric rattle designed to help babies learn. Rosa set herself apart from the other students by making very environmental and humanitarian-savvy choices even at 16, and doing it without the flash or flamboyance that some use to draw attention to themselves.
Even though I knew a few more vegetarians over the years and considered a few other points—the question over whether humans should live at another living being’s expense, for example—I never explored the issue of humane treatment very comprehensively.
Until… see part 3.