Gobble Gobble!

Out driving today, Animal from The Muppet Show snapped this shot of wild turkeys roaming around Ithaca.  (Okay, maybe it was me in an Animal T-shirt.)  Click the image for more detail.

11 months ago, I watched five turkeys traipse through my backyard in a V formation, the leader in front, the others a step behind and fanning out to the sides.  Prior to that day, my primary experience with turkey had been Thanksgiving related, but I was struck by what beautiful creatures they are roaming out in the wild.

Though I'd flirted with vegetarianism/vegaquarianism in the past, I'd never committed to it, and yet upon seeing the turkeys out on patrol I made a promise to myself to cut all beef, pork and poultry from my diet for a year. 

One trip around the sun mammal and fowl free.  Just to find out what that would feel like.

Happily for all involved, it's been a really positive experience.  I feel great, I've lost weight, and the longstanding sense of guilt I feel for munching animals is now confined just to seafood.  For better or worse, I've discovered that my sensation of guilt directly correlates with the intelligence of the animal--it's difficult for me to get too worked up about eating a tuna, but pigs are as clever as a three-year-old child and if I wouldn't eat the child, why the pig?

Whalers, poachers and cannibals aside, I really don't begrudge anyone eating whatever they want.  We're each of us on a different path and there are sometimes very good reasons to be a carnivore (recently, for example, I was chatting up a waitress who'd been a lifelong vegetarian until she became pregnant and her doctor advised her to add animal protein to her diet for health reasons.)  So I'm not preaching; I'm just celebrating a personal decision that's given me more than I thought it would.

Now I'm a little concerned about mercury from the seafood in my diet, so after the year is up I might go back to chicken now and again--weekends, maybe, inspired by Graham Hill's weekday veg proposal. 

But I don't think I'm ever going back to beef or pork or turkey, and for that I have the turkeys to thank.

Comments

[Sarita Cooke]

Beware of the Mercury. I drive along Rt. 13 in VA where Purdue and Tyson have big killing machines. The trucks drive along crammed with chickens,their beaks are cut off to protect them from pecking each other to death. Often a chicken would fly off a truck in front of my car. Totally put me off eating chicken. I had already given up on beef and pork. So I did the salmon route and got too much mercury in my system so go easy. Now I have become a coward and eat cut up chicken that I hide in bits of lettuce and other veggies!
Sarita (ex Eisenberger) again. I've been told to get a blog to sell the children's book that i've just self published and illustrated that's why i'm sort of experimenting with answering yours! Sorry Nick. It's a first for me, blogging that is. Your mum and I were at the Boston Museum School of art togther. We go way back to our early 20's before either of us were married. When we did marry Peter, my ex, your dad and mum and of course myself always had dinner together every Friday night in Cambridge, then you came to stay a couple of time with us in New Jersey. Anyway, go easy with the fish. Tuna is really bad.
Would you advise getting a blog? Barnes and Noble told me to do it?