About Vegetarianism

Today the vegetarian is confused. There's more to life than carrots. She wonders about what it really means to care for animals. Does never eating red meat really make her an animal lover? A little dog with a hurt foot trembles outside in the cold, his sad eyes caked with wet dirt and pink sores. He's scared and confused. And he just will not take the beefy doggie treats the vegetarian gives him, nor accept her gestured invitations to come into the warm. Man's best friend smells the neighbour's elusive dogs and lingers around his step. Maybe that's all he needs: friends. Doggie friends. He has a collar. Makes you wonder where his best friend is. Is this dog just a little wanderer, or is he really neglected? No doubt there are those who claim a love of animals through their eating habits and that's a small start; but is that more important than taking care of their own animals? Like people, so many problems face animals: abuse, negligence, homelessness, hunger, cold. Shutting all of our farms down is not going to protect the animals from this problem.

The greatest lover of animals I had ever met was the farthest thing from a vegetarian. She used their feathers, furs, and skins as objects of art and beauty and purpose. As a taxidermist, she retrieved the remains of road kill and turned them into beautiful sun catchers. Sketching their spirits into beautiful pieces of pointillism, and stitching their guts into handbags. She put an emotional dent in my typical naïve perspective on the love of animals. She not only loved animals in their lives, but respected them long after their deaths. Their bodies became her body. Their souls became her soul. Their beings became her being. She wrapped herself in their skins, knowingly and respectfully. She filled her body with their flesh, knowingly and respectfully. She decorated her world with their corpses; their dried, prepared, perfumed, beautiful corpses. Though she was fully aware that people would find that weird. And it was. Sounds morbid. And it is. But let me tell you, the skulls that filled her closet were a product of her life long passion for combing the beaches to honour its beasts. And she used every single part of the animal to bring her spirit to posterity. The mere vegetarian pales in spirit to the passion of this true animal lover. Take it from me as a vegetarian. No bias undermines this opinion.

My seventy-eight-year-old uncle fished all of his life. He once prepared, for me, fish that he caught himself. Uh oh. How could I refuse that? To refuse it would be so ungrateful and mean. How does a vegetarian deal with this situation without seeming totally ignorant? But it was against my vegetarian conscience to eat it. I couldn't possibly tell him that I wouldn't eat it. He fished it and fried it. It would just be wrong. And apparently, I just wouldn't be a Newfoundlander if I didn't eat fish. So instead, I remember sneaking it into napkins under the table and throwing it discreetly in the garbage. Now I realize that that was a greater waste of life than killing the fish to sustain another life in the first place. It would have been more moral for me to eat it, but I didn't want to defy my integrity as a vegetarian. What do you do? Now, the fallacy that states that you can't be a Newfoundlander and not eat fish seems really not so fallacious.

I have a religious type friend. He says happily to me, "Vegetarians will be rewarded in heaven." But then, with no pity for the lamb he tells a gleeful story about how some religion or other feeds the baby lamb water for five days to clean it out so it's safe to eat. Religion is the type of thing that people like to force on others. And I don't force my religion on others like many religious types do. I don't serve people vegetarian because I'm a vegetarian. And when mom asks me to pick up a can of corned beef hash for my brother, I do it. You hear assertions like, it's wrong to kill animals and meat is murder. Even I as a vegetarian find these statements somewhat disheartening. It's not a religion. So for the sake of not wasting life and not hurting the feelings of old men, I can bend the rules but never break them. And even this is rare. I once heard of a fanatical vegetarian who wouldn't keep cats as pets because it is their nature to kill mice and small birds. But if that made you an animal-lover then we'd have nothing to do with x percent of the animals on earth. And how does that show love for animals when we despise their own natures? But if I don't believe I can tell other people what to eat then neither do I think I can tell animals.

Debating with people about the rights and wrongs of vegetarianism gets a little trying after awhile. There are those who won't eat meat because they don't like killing animals. But then there are those who don't eat dairy because they believe that exploits animals. If I had my own farm I would have control of the treatment of the animals. I really find it hard to think that there is any right or wrong. Some cultures think that what we eat is not merely wrong, it's disgusting. Cows and pigs. Blech. They'd rather it frogs. I just know what is wrong for me. In my heart, I feel like being a vegetarian is right for me. And what about those who don't have supermarkets and can't help but live off the land? Some raise dogs for protection. Some keep cattle for food. Now define land: potatoes, chickens, worms, dirt.

When I was a shy twenty-something who kept to herself a lot, few were truer to their vegetarianisms than me. In fact, I never broke my strict vegan diet for five years - and my vegetarian for ten. Not for anyone. But then I started interacting more with people and found myself running into more difficult sarcasm and insensitive nagging on a regular basis. I started working with an old nag of a man. And as sweet as he is (and he is) he is also grossly persistent.

"Would you like some turkey?"
"Not really."
"Ah c'mon, have some turkey. Why don't you want any turkey?"
"I'm not in the mood for it today."
"Why?"
"There's too much turkey around at Christmas time."

To him, I'm not in the mood for it today means ah sure I want some turkey. I'm just too embarrassed to tell you. Or there's too much turkey around at Christmas time just means I'm afraid I'm getting fat. I wish he was empathetic enough to realize that absolutely every single response I make to his questions has a far easier translation: I just don't eat meat!

Now bear in mind that this is Christmas time. He thought I split the turkey up between us, but while he wasn't looking I put the entire chunk on his plate so he just thought I had some. He would never know how many times I have done that. So he'd have to stop nagging as I eat my carrots very surreptitiously. It's hard to be polite and honest when we're taught that it's impolite to refuse everything… even when you're a vegetarian and "everything" has meat in it. In conversation once it came up that I was a vegetarian and then he was like: "Well, she eats fish and turkey sometimes." Ahh! I don't want others to get the wrong idea - that I am a willing meat eater even though I am a vegetarian. This happens every time I meet new people. I'm afraid to tell them that I am a vegetarian; I'm insecure about what they might think. I'm too sensitive to listen to responses like "There's nothing wrong with eating meat." I never said that there was. I just don't. Or: "Don't be so bloody foolish." A lot of people put on the snoot detector when I tell them I'm a vegetarian as though they think it makes me snooty.

In short, if I can choose vegetarian, I will choose vegetarian. No surprise why I started to bring my own food in. The only way to sustain a fully honest vegetarian diet is to bring your own bloody foolish carrots.

Elaine 07