Enclosed in glass, our sunroom is the perfect observatory for wildlife
comings and goings. In the evenings sometimes the kookaburras will
perch on a tree stump at the edge of the lawn, picking out worms from
where we're pulling up bidgee-widgees (vines that grow sticky balls at
the end, like giant burrs), and I'll hear the classic jungle-sound
like a monkey's laughter that is their call.
Chicken is being rather demanding this morning. Perhaps I'll go into a
bit about her (or him). Apparently there's all sorts of ways to tell
if a chicken will turn out to be a rooster or a hen, like shining a
torch on their feathers to see if they're shiny, looking at the shape
of the tail feathers, looking to see if it's getting a frock coat
along its breast – all sorts of ways that are all fallible. We simply
don't know. Deva could be anything, she could be deciding right now
what she wants to be. When I started writing this morning she flew up
into my lap and began picking the fuzz off my old grey sweater.
Occasionally she'd scratch and keep picking, readjusting her footing
on my arms. This gave me a great opportunity to watch chicken behavior
– something I hold close to my heart, being a Rooster myself. Indeed,
the way she picked the front of my sweater clean of invisible pills
reminded me of myself, picking at zits in the mirror. Fortunately,
there's no mirror here, so I don't pick!
Deva's seems to be always looking to get into whatever it is you're
into. When I make breakfast, she's up on the counter, hopping onto the
pot to see if she can have a bite. Mostly, she makes a big racket and
might knock something over. I laugh to see her ruffle her feathers!
She keeps picking at my green tea leaves, too, leaving them strewn
about the counter. Just when you think it's over, chicken soup for
dinner, she settles down and roosts – on the counter, on Emma's bike
handle, in the corner, and you don't even know she's there until she's
hungry again and the cheeping starts up.
This certainly puts new perspective on factory farms where they cram
60,000 chickens into a warehouse, clip their beaks and never let them
scratch in the dirt or establish a pecking order. In fact, living so
close to animals (we've got two cats, one chicken, three ducks and one
rabbit) makes me much more aware of how life goes in an animal world.
I keep forgetting I'm a part of that – I'm an animal, you're an
animal, we're all animals here. Animals aren't kind – I don't know if
that's what I mean – they do things for themselves. Last night in the
garden, Monster, one of Emma's cats, was stalking Poppy, the other
cat. He was on one side of the fence, Poppy obliviously on the other.
As Poppy came towards the fence, Monster jumped up and surprised him.
He had no malicious intent, as they were on either side of the fence,
so you can only conclude it was for entertainment value. Animals have
a sense of humor.
The other morning I went with Emma to milk cows. She's learning at the
farm down the road, where they run about 20 head of cattle, provide
the community with organic beef and milk, and eat their rabbits and
guinea pigs. Talking to the woman about running an organic farm was
helpful in allowing me to see a meat-eater's point of view. When an
old dairy cow broke a hip and had to be shot (this is avoiding the
discussion of suffering as something to be avoided) she said wasting
"M" was unthinkable, that she'd much rather eat it than bury it. This
woman is very involved with her livestock, moving fences for them
every day so they have new pasture to graze, giving all the dairy cows
names (but not the beef cows, they get numbers) and spending enough
time to get to know their personalities. It's the same with her
bunnies. Many have names, they even train a 'bench bunny' to sit in
the kitchen while they prepare dinner, even if that dinner is...bunny.
While we were milking, this woman talked about the differences in
fresh milk and store milk – how everything affects the taste of the
milk, from what's in the grass, to what's called a 'stripe' where
chemicals are applied along the cow's spine to keep away parasites and
other uglies. This poisons the cow, too, and thus its milk. She talked
about the commercial dairy industry and the practice of tail-docking,
where they cut off the tail (without anesthesia) so that it doesn't
flick the farmer in the face when he's milking. The thing is, they
feed these cattle food they can't digest, so they end up having
diarrhea they can't control, and getting it all over their tails. If
you look at the cycle, so much of the problems are created by people,
and if you let an animal live naturally, they can take care of
themselves. However, in the case of cows, they've been bred with
people for millenia; you don't have wild cows.
She explained that each cow's milk tastes different, according to what
they've been eating and their breed. Certain cows have higher cream
content (like Jersey cows), some cows (like Holstein's) produce a lot
of milk with little cream, which is why we use them in the dairy
industry. As we were milking a Jersey and a Holstein that day, she
invited me to try some milk straight from the cow. Until now I've
neglected to mention the coffee set-up we'd brought out to the barn,
to make "cow-paccinos" - filling a mug half-full with coffee, then
filling it the rest of the way with milk squirted straight from the
udder, so that it foams at the top. Quite ingenious, I thought. If I
drank coffee, I might have had some of that.
But I did try some fresh milk. Never had it before – had to give it a go!
It was warm, sweet like custard almost, with a thinner consistency
than I expected, and a texture that left a film in my mouth. It really
tasted like warmed milk, the kind you drink before bed, with an added
depth of flavor – like the difference between eating filtered and
unfiltered honey.
I tried the second cow, too, since they're different tasting, and
found...it tasted the same. It didn't give me an upset stomach or
anything, and it was quite rich, more like a dessert. I also found I
don't terribly enjoy drinking milk. Part of it could be my veganism
and the way I don't agree with keeping animals for your own 'use,' and
part of it was knowing I don't need milk in my diet to be healthy. It
was almost as if I was prepared not to like it because it doesn't
agree with my philosophies about life, and, it's not healthy. There's
something to be said for moderation, and I know a little milk, just
like a little chocolate, will not kill me. At this point, I prefer not
to like what I'm choosing not to eat. That seems extremely
narrow-minded.
I've been thinking about eggs, too. Every day Emma lets the ducks out
of their hut, and then rummages in their bedding for the eggs they lay
in the morning. One or two eggs a day adds up to a lot; these ladies
lay with or without a male duck around, as will a chicken. It's what
they do. The reason Emma leaves the ducks in their hut till late
morning is because otherwise, they might lay their eggs out in the
grass somewhere, where they'd leave them.
In all of these arguments for eating animal products or animals,
there's always they perspective of giving back to the land; burying
the cow in the earth as fertilizer, leaving eggs out in the grass for
other animals to find or to break and melt into the earth. As it is,
anyone who flushes their poo is depriving the land of nutrients that
you've taken from the land. Consider reading the Humanure Handbook!
So, eating eggs. Taste good, not bad in moderation, have the potential
to be a little ducky. I seriously thought about eating eggs, and I
find that even thinking about eating one, I begin to feel shut off
from knowing I'm an animal, relating to animal life. This is ironic,
considering that ducks and chickens eat little animals like snails,
insects and even mice, if they can catch them. The cat caught a baby
bunny last night (which we rescued and released – ever the interfering
humans!), a hawk probably carried away a cat Emma used to have, every
time I step I'm compacting the earth and possibly killing something.
Where does this leave me? In the same place. I don't feel the need to
eat eggs, and the thought of eating animals repels me. Obviously it's
not repellant to other animals!
Here I am, stuck once again at the question of ideals and my truth.
What's right for me? That is the only question I can answer.
