In the Mooood
When you see a huge, majestic elk, or at least its head, sitting on someone's wall, you can't help but think, "Those Elks are loony, but the lodge does a lot of good in the community." No, it isn't legal to hunt Elk's Club members even if they do wear antlers on their heads. And most taxidermists will refuse to stuff them anyway.
At any rate, many of the animals people shoot for food are beautiful creatures prior to their arrival in the freezer. But it is interesting to note that those animals that have been domesticated to be raised for food are not easy to sympathize with.
For example, who has ever felt sorry for a chicken? They are noisy, smelly birds that keep ungodly hours. Besides, anything that runs around frantically after you cut its head off deserves whatever it gets. I include the Democratic Party in that statement.
Or consider sheep. Sure, they're kind of cute and fuzzy looking, but they are so stupid that they need dogs to guide them. Any animal that looks to dogs for intellectual leadership definitely falls into the "too stupid to live" category.
Pigs, for their part, are so wholly devoid of redeeming qualities that we turn every single scrap of them into food products. Then they scrape up the bits left over on the floor, compress them into hot dogs, and attempt to pass them off as food products. Pork bellies are even traded on the commodities exchange. Not the whole pig mind you, just the "bellies." This tells you something about those Wall Street types and also shows what people think of pigs. Imagine what would happen if you tried to string a tennis racket with catgut, much less bought kitten bellies as an investment!
The largest common farm animal routinely hacked up and sold in grocery stores everywhere is the cow. I know that cattle ranchers have special names for those animals that are turned into beef, but they are always listening to country music. Every time I try to get someone to explain to me which cows are called steers, heifers, dogies, Guernseys, Herefords, bull, oxen (okay, I knew those two), or cows, I find my brain shutting down. Billy Ray Cyrus and Dwight Yokum hit me fastest, stripping away I.Q. points faster than a Texas two-step, whatever the hell that means. See what I mean?
Anyone who has ever seen a cow standing in a field, meditatively chewing his/her/its cud knows that being ground into hamburger is probably an improvement in a cow's quality of life. Look at them. They are totally and completely bored. They want it to be over. What does a cow do all day? Stand in a field eating grass. Already reason enough to be suicidal. Then they regurgitate older grass so they can chew it some more. If cows had opposable thumbs, there is little doubt that they would be putting themselves through meat grinders. They might learn how to use a can opener and try something from Chef Boyardee, but this would be little improvement on cud-chewing and might even border on cannibalism.
Here's a scary thought: What would happen if cows got to like the taste of beefaroni? (I'm not sure which is scarier, the thought itself, or the fact that I thought of it at all.) Would cows then begin pushing each other into meat grinders to satisfy their desire for more beef? At least it would add a little excitement to their lives.
Fortunately for all concerned, cows have the intellect you would expect from an animal that repeatedly chews the same bit of grass. Thus it is safe to assume that cows will continue standing around bored right up until they are turned into beefaroni. Maybe even after that.
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