Vegetarianism

It's common amongst Buddhists and yogis but that is not why I've decided to give it a try. It's because I love animals and hate the idea of an animal being hurt or killed. Especially with the general love of hunting and fishing here in Winona. My father was a hunter, pheasants and quail mostly. He tried to get us to eat the birds he killed, but I cracked a baby tooth on buckshot, which pretty much ended eating them. I reconciled the idea of eating animals with being honest about where the food came from, and never "wearing what I won't eat." I would wear leather but not fur, and I adored the various cats and dogs that came into my life, and I would studiously ignore the fact that while I loved my pets, my eating meat linked me with the systematic abuse and slaughter of creatures just as innocent as my dog.

Then one episode of Queer Eye showed a man brutally ripping apart a live lobster. I watched another man on television making "fresh sushi" by vivisecting a fish pulled right out of the ocean. I began to feel like a hypocrite, loving animals and still eating them, unable to face the truth. I avoided scenes of slaughterhouses on television or in the press,becuase they made me so upset. But I would eat a steak, porkchop, or fried chicken without a thought. I discovered nice, lean buffalo meat, great for the Weight Watchers points, but also helping to create a market for a new animal to be bred and "harvested."

So I'm going to try to give up meat and no longer contribute to the horrible slaughter. Then I can look my sweet smiling corgi dog without being a hypocrite.