September 24, 2021
To animals,
I don’t know why I’ve chosen this time to write this. Maybe it’s my ever increasing cognizance of my mortality. Or the three dogs currently napping in my house.
I’m neither vegan nor vegetarian. But I’m trying. My intake of animal meat has decreased significantly. (Fish, sorry that’s going to take some time)
With recent videos of animal cruelty of all kinds I find myself not wanting to be responsible for any more animal deaths…but I haven’t been successful.
I love hamburgers. I love sausage and pepperoni pizza. I love chicken sandwiches. I eat salmon every day. Now, there is a fast-food restaurant (Mos Burger) that I eat soy patty hamburgers. They taste great and are guilt-free.
The guilt goes back a long way. I’ve never bought in to the fact we were taking the lives of others for our pleasure. That was most apparent in steak, which I never liked but was forced to eat as a child. I loved hot dogs, as they don’t appear to be remotely related to living beings, but after the movie Babe that died down to once or twice a year, commemorating my dad’s birthday and passing day.
I’m sorry me and my cousin found blue robin eggs in a nest and threw them against rocks. I didn’t want to, but had to follow what he was doing. I wasn’t strong enough to say no. This scene plays out in my head at least once a week where I wonder how I can be forgiven, but I think I’m forced to live with it forever.
When I was around five I happened to be on my cousin’s family farm where they were sacrificing the chickens. This scene was and still is the most horrific scene I’ve ever seen play out before my eyes. It starts with the axe landing on the chicken’s neck on a chopping block and ends with the chicken running around headless with blood spurting out the neck like a child playing with a blood fountain. Did all five-year-olds have this experience? And if not, should they? Despite the trauma I loved my mom’s fried chicken
growing up, but it wasn’t until about 20 years ago I stopped being able to eat chicken on the bone as it made me acutely aware I was eating dead flesh. The hairs sticking out from the fried skin didn’t help either.
Probably the worst memory I have regarding treatment of animals is from summer school. I took a class called Community Study where each day we were loaded on a bus and brought to a local business or facility. Radio Station, Snowmobile Manufacturing Plant, Police Station, etc. But the highlight of the summer, and I say highlight because most of the kids circled the date we would go to the meat processing plant. As I was a boy and was to appear to think it was cool, I did my best to fool all that I was unaffected by watching a living cow get slaughtered right before my eyes. I’m embarrassed to say I watched the killing, cleaning, skinning and quartering of a cow.
That said, I’ve read books on anthropology and early civilizations and there are tales of primitive tribes eating their deceased relatives, believing it was a waste to not use the mortal coil left behind as nutrition for the living. At one time I would’ve thought that barbaric, but now it doesn’t seem so bizarre. I wouldn’t mind my body being eaten for nutrition to a living being. Better than being stuck in the ground or burned to ashes I believe.
So. What do I want to say? I don’t know. I just want all of you to know I’m sorry for what I’m responsible for in the past and I will continue to try cut down on eating meat.
And when I do, I am thinking about the sacrifice you made and ask for your forgiveness.
Sincerely,
Ryan
Songs I’m listening to-
Beatles- Things We Said Today
Beatles- Two of Us
Bill Withers- Use Me
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