"No Heads Please"
I’m not exactly a vegetarian...
Well, maybe a moral vegan.
I occasionally eat meat,
but I feel guilty about it.
The trouble is
I know a lot of animals personally,
and we have good relationships.
I would go hunting
only if I really hated a certain deer.
I like dogs that I know,
but not the ones I don’t.
Most cats are nice.
Weird but nice.
I used to ride horses a lot,
and they aren’t usually mean spirited,
but they can be skittish and unpredictable.
The horse I rode mostly was named Diane.
She often wanted to run when I wanted to walk.
It’s hard to be a horse whisperer
when you’re hanging on to their ears for dear life.
I was a hoarse whisperer.
I ate horsemeat once at my uncle’s house.
He told us what it was after we’d eaten it.
The perfect host.
I can eat a cooked animal
when it’s cut into unrecognizable squares or triangles.
No heads please.
In a classy Chicago restaurant
they served my trout almondine
with the head placed in front of it on the plate for decoration.
I thought it was a hushpuppy
until I noticed that it was giving me a dirty look.
People raised on farms don’t have my kind of squeamishness.
A couple of our best friends keep telling me
how good tasting a chicken is
when it’s killed that same morning.
It might be even better if you could wait
and kill it right on your plate.
Chickens never win.
In San Francisco
there were small corpses hanging in Chinese store windows.
I was suspicious because one had a Frisbee in its mouth.
Oddly, I do like meatloaf.
Copyright © February 19, 2005 by Jack Blanchard. All rights reserved.
