It’s Good to be Meat

We took Blackie and Red to the butcher’s today.

It’s disturbing to take animals you’ve [1] cared for for over a year to be killed. But they’re cows and they had a good life. They were raised on ample pasture and always had good water and good feed.

I’ve been reading Edward Abbey’s very odd book “Desert Solitaire.” In it he writes about owls and rabbits, and that the owl sits in a tree and calls. The rabbit is huddled somewhere and if the rabbit never broke cover, it would never be eaten. But the rabbit does and is. Abbey speculates about why the rabbit does that. Does the rabbit want to be eaten, does it come out when the owl calls? If so, does the rabbit feel gratitude at that moment?

As I said, it’s a very odd book.

But it’s the kind of thing you think about when you’re faced very immediately with the reality that the meat you’re eating was a living animal.

I felt sad taking Blackie and Red in to be killed. But I feel worse when I go to the grocery store and pick up a plastic wrapped chunk of meat and feel nothing. If I’m going to eat meat I at least owe the animal the very best life it could have; wholesome food, clean water, green pastures, shade from the sun and shelter from the wind.

Blackie and Red had all of that.

1. As usual when I say the plural pronoun, in this case “you’ve”, I mean “not me.”