Hunting

Hunting.
It was a necessity once.
Men loved it then, I understand.
I read something about that when I was in college getting my degree in English Literature.  Back when I had to read what I was told.  It was about the phenomenon called, “deer fever.”

Some men love it yet today.  Why?  We have grocery stores.  There is an abundance of meat there.  It’s less expensive.  Waaay less.

I went round and round with my brother-in-law, Ches; may God rest his deer killing soul.
He lectured me on, Thinning Out the Herd.  He told me there wasn’t enough food for them all and they’d die anyway.  He ate his kills and tried to convince everyone that it tasted delicious, when the smell of it cooking told me otherwise.

He asked me where I thought those steaks and hamburgers that I ate came from.  He loved to remind me that I was eating dead chickens.

He didn’t stop with deer.  He murdered rabbits, turkeys, and any other animal that had the misfortune to wander into his sites.  I loved Ches, but we disagreed on this subject.  I told him once, long before he got sick, that when he died, he was going to meet up with all of those animals, standing there in the “Tunnel” with their arms folded and tapping their feet, impatiently.


 I’m not opposed to killing animals for food.  I love hamburgers.  I just don’t want to kill them myself.  I don’t want to think about it.  My children used to take great pleasure in asking me questions that would make me stop eating.  “Mom, what did they do with the veins in this chicken?”

 I could not eat an animal that I had known on the hoof, so to speak.  One time I had a student, whose sister was in the 4-H program at the local high school.  She was raising two pigs to sell.  Richard thought it might be a good idea to invest in a pork belly.  We went over to put our claim on one half of one of her pigs.  I met them.  Their names were Martini and Rossi.  I couldn’t eat a bite of that pork.  My family enjoyed it.

Once, when we were living in Tulsa, a neighbor brought us two steaks when she came back from a weekend at her father’s farm.  Seems he had just slaughtered a cow and…
Richard enjoyed both of the steaks.  I realize I’m unreasonable in this area.  But.  Still.

Ches was never able to explain it to me properly.
Can someone tell me how an otherwise sensitive, good person can derive pleasure from watching a magnificent animal drop in his sight?

Incidentally, I finally found a way to stop my children from grossing me out at the table.  I told them that I had washed the potato skins they were eating with the same brush that I had used to clean the hamster cage.