One sober night in college, a group of us saw a possum scamper in the shadows by our house.
A friend and I watched two country boys beat the bejesus out of that animal.
Where these guys grew up, possums were considered worthless bottom-feeders. One guy’s steel-toed boot sent this possum flying end over end like a football. The other country boy grabbed a shovel, swinging hard enough to hear a “clunk” when striking the possum’s skull. The possum hissed instead of playing dead. Disturbed by the scene, I left before they finished the job.
A few years before that, I joined a summer work crew for a corn farmer. Fellow teens taunted one peer’s peculiar lunch: Rabbit. Earlier that week, he was teased for eating squirrel.
The only animals who suffered for this guy’s lunch were the humans who heard his lips smack while he gnawed on squirrel bones. Instead of questioning how he prepared these critters for consumption, we wondered if his parents were actually brother and sister.
Speaking of squirrels, a June 18 article titled “Dead squirrels drive people nuts” prompted several Mirror readers to respond in disgust. The article reported on Federal Way residents who found poisoned squirrels in their yards. An enforcement sergeant with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife said squirrels are not a protected species — making the animals fair game for homeowners.
“If you want to get rid of them, you’ve got to be willing to kill them,” said the sergeant, who also recommended ways to end a squirrel’s life.
But what if, instead of poisoning these squirrels, a neighbor shot some with a pellet gun, then ate them for dinner? In some regions of the United States, squirrels are wild game and hunted for food.
Likewise, humans raise domestic livestock such as cattle for steaks, leather and cash, not for their companionship or cuteness. Humans also routinely kill wild animals by building housing developments in their habitats, but that’s a discussion for another time.
Let’s get back to food. We strive to kill select animals for food as “humanely” as possible. For example, a cattle gun stuns livestock by using compressed air to drive a retractable bolt into their heads. Then we slaughter and eat the animals in a process that pays the bills (and fills bellies) for a lot of people.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world’s largest animal rights organization, regularly targets fast-food chain KFC’s sources of chicken. In these “chicken factories,” the birds get pumped full of hormones while living in foul and cramped quarters. Among its list of demands, PETA wants KFC to ensure the chickens die in a more humane manner, as opposed to drowning them in scalding water.
However, fast-food restaurants can inflict abuse on another type of animal: Their customers.
As a teen, I worked for a leading fast-food chain in a typical Middle American small town. An hour before closing time one night, a lone customer ordered a grilled chicken sandwich.
When the order came up, our shift manager caught a slacker teen employee pulling an old chicken breast from the trash. The manager fired this teen on the spot, then grilled up a fresh piece of chicken for the customer’s sandwich.
If only that impatient customer knew why it took so long to receive his food. Had our manager turned the corner five seconds later, the customer would have eaten five minutes earlier — ignorant of his sandwich’s history, but happier in the end.
Thankfully, the manager spared him from the cruel truth.
Mirror editor Andy Hobbs: editor@fedwaymirror.com.
