Furry Backyard Creatures
Last weekend I was loading A in the car and felt something squishy under my foot. I initially assumed I was stepping on a pile of semi-rotted helicopters. When I looked down it was a little gray rodent. Dead. Mostly intact. No obvious signs of what might have killed it except for the part about me stepping on it for a good 2 minutes.
We speculated briefly as to which of our kitties had been the mighty hunter and delivered us this grand prize. I assumed Clio because she is always trying to catch squirrels. Spike just wants to chase the neighborhood cats off his territory and shows no interest in other critters, rodentia or otherwise.
All speculation came to and end during my gardening on Saturday. Clio was playing with/intently staring at something in the grass. It was chirping at her and I assumed it was a cricket or some other squeaky insect. It was not. It was gray and rodent like and would squeak every time Clio batted at it with her paw.
Then it ran from Clio and I saw it in all of it’s rodent-glory and I shrieked like a little girl. How lame is that? And then I called for Mike to see Clio’s new toy. Quite against her will, we hauled her onto the porch and let the little rodent run away.
I don’t really want Clio killing wildlife, mostly because I don’t want to clean it up and after hearing all about a 3 year old with the Bubonic plague because he played with dead squirrels, I don’t exactly want Adam happening upon Clio’s latest discarded kill (NOT that I think you can get Plague in Wisconsin — California, New Mexico, Arizona yes, upper Midwest, not so much), but still, playing with dead animals is never good for your health and anyway, eeew eew eew eew eew and eew. At LEAST she doesn’t try to eat what she catches.
After having read Murph’s post about the bunnies, I suppose I could have squashed the rodent and dropped it in the trash for pick-up today. I have even semi-seriously joked about killing my back-yard bunnies, but after reading his post I’ve decided I’m a little too soft and too weak (willed/stomached) to actually deliberately kill anything but insects. I couldn’t even flush Sir-Poops-A-Lot, the goldfish I bought for an on-line biology class I was taking a few years ago. Sure, I killed him through neglect, but I couldn’t actually flush him when he was healthy.
I even feel bad eating chicken wings. Damn, they’re tasty, but every time you order a dozen wings, you’re directly responsible for the deaths of at least 6 chickens. For what? A little bit of tasty meat, some delicious hot sauce and some luscious blue cheese dressing. Of course, then I rationalize — somebody ate the breasts, the thighs, the drumsticks, somebody else probably made cat or dog food or gravy or chicken broth from the rest of the chicken’s bits so I’m just doing my best to make sure the entire chicken is recycled. Riiiiiiiiight…
Is this how people become vegetarians?
Vegetarians happen for 3 reasons...
1. They’re trying to get laid by a vegetarian. So they pretend not to like meat so they can get a bit of… meat.
2. Their parents were trying to get laid by a vegetarian at some point and have passed the learned behavior on to the proof of their success.
3. They don’t want to go to hell, so someone smarter and more coniving than they are pretends to talk to god who tells him/her not to eat meat.