Not reworking the Ten Commandments here, just making a statement of fact. If you raise animals for food, the inevitable day comes when you have to start moving them from the pen or pasture to the plate. If you don’t raise livestock, but you do eat meat, you are also involved in the process. This doesn’t make you a murderer, or even a sinner. You are in the company of respectable people including prophets and the God who gave the commandment about not killing.
Nevertheless, taking the life of an animal is a solemn and sobering experience for many people including me. I would sooner shoo an insect than swat it. I have been known to carry spiders and hornets outside and set them free rather than executing them with a rolled up newspaper or a boot sole. (I am not so considerate with mosquitoes and flies.)
Harvesting the meat crop is a dreaded day. I’ve never gotten over reading Bambi and Black Beauty as a child. But it has to be done. “Time to cowboy up and get to the business at hand” I reiterated the words of wisdom I have poured out over the years on our children, and myself., “The issue is not that we kill them, but how did we care for them while they were alive? If we pen or cage an animal we are responsible to provide its needs. Code of the west, take care of your animals first and then yourself.” And, “If you can avoid it, don’t name food.”
I killed my first goat with a 30.06 hunting rifle borrowed from my neighbor. That was a black humor ballet. Maybelle our goat was bobbing and weaving on the end of a short rope. I was holding on to the rope with one hand and trying to aim the hefty rifle with the other. I figured I had one chance in three of hitting the goat. The other two targets were my foot, and the United Airlines flight from Denver passing over. I shot lucky, dropped her instantly, breathed a sigh of relief, and decided never again this way. Too loud, too violent, too dangerous.
I read up on how the Old Testament priests sacrificed their animals. To them it was a religious rite. They honed their skills and their knives. I liked that approach. Even today Jewish butchers are legendarily efficient because they only get one pass at the animal’s jugular vein. If they take more than one stroke, the meat is no longer kosher and has to be sold on the gentile market for less money. . So I bought a very sharp knife, and the next time straddled the goat, held it’s head under the chin. Goats do not like to be held by their main weapon, the horns. I thanked the animal for the sacrifice it was making, and cut its throat in a stroke. The goat dropped to the ground. No struggling; a couple of reflex twitches, and it was all over. It was a quiet and sensitive, even sacred moment. That’s how I slaughtered the doe goats from that day. The big bucks are a different challenge. They are contentious and can be dangerous with their horns.
For chickens, we have metal cones, shaped like a megaphone. We put the chicken inside with its head hanging out of the small opening. This has proved the least stressful on the birds and on us. Chickens are reactionary creatures. If one freaks out they all do. They even freak themselves out. If they see their wings flapping they figure “Why would my wings be flapping if there wasn’t something chasing me?”
But with their wings tucked to their sides by the cone they relax. A sharp knife cuts into their jugular vein without causing them pain. As the blood supplying oxygen slows, their brain shuts down, and they quietly go to sleep. If you do it right, they don’t even flinch. It is the most gentle way to kill a chicken.
Nevertheless, Saturday I was dreading the experience. I went jogging as usual in the morning. My route takes me through the cemetery where my first wife, Diane is buried. It is in the foothills near our house, a peaceful and beautiful location with a spectacular view of Utah Valley below. As I approached Diane’s grave a picture entered into my mind. It was not a vision, but it was a very comforting scene. Diane who loves animals was standing in a beautiful meadow with blue sky above and a few puffy clouds. Appearing in the distance was a bird. It was soaring like an eagle. It floated down and landed on her outstretched arm. She laughed, petted it, and set it down. It began to forage and frolic in the lush grass. But it was not an eagle. It was a chicken. One by one the others arrived as we sent them on their way from this imperfect world we live in. The birds had filled the measure of their creation, and were now donating their bodies to feed us while their spirits swooped off to chicken heaven. That’s a scenario that works for me.
As for the goats, I was talking to my young friend Samuel Thrupp who had helped milk Daisy, one of our goats. She got too old to milk, but I couldn’t bring myself to slaughter her. ( See advice above, “Don’t name food.”) Finally stiff, old, and rheumatoid, she wheezed her last through fluid filled lungs. I didn’t do her any favors by procrastinating her trip to goat heaven.
I told Samuel that Daisy had gone to her reward. A man passing heard our conversation and later asked with a grin “What is a goat’s reward. No question about that one. I told him, “Goat heaven is a green pasture, a bubbling creek, grass to graze, and trees to browse on, and fences you can jump over or wiggle under, tether ropes you can untie you’re your teeth, corrals in which you can explore, and always find an escape route, bottomless grain barrels you can pry open with your horn and feast to your fill. And most of all, an owner who doesn’t get bent out of shape if you do all these fun things. That is heaven for a goat.
Silence is Golden, or Poison
Category: Commentaries
My father liked this saying, “Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.” I think there is some wisdom in that. I could write a book, maybe a set of encyclopedias on the things I have said that were less intelligent than silence. Usually these pearls of foolishness spilled out when I was angry or under pressure. Inevitably sooner or later, sometimes years later I have wished I could inhale these words back. But, as the late Paul Harvey used to say, “It’s mighty hard to unring a bell.”
So I decided a long time ago to take responsibility for my words and actions. The current buzz word is “accountability.” To paraphrase the song, “I was country when country wasn’t cool”. I like to think I was accountable when accountable wasn’t cool. Full disclosure: I often didn’t/don’t live up to my lofty goal. But I believed in it, still do.
To achieve accountability, I vowed that under pressure my first response would be to shut my mouth. Later when I had time to analyze the situation and prepare a proper response I would do so. Alas, like most silver bullet solutions, this has its limitations. It can even cause its own problems. I have a pretty good collection of times when I should have spoken but didn’t.
I was a hot shot Sunday School teacher in my church with all the wisdom and insight of 18 years when I picked up a piece of chalk from the ward (congregation) “media center” a closet containing a few battered copies of the scriptures, a short stack of faded pictures, chalk and an eraser or two. I was in a hurry as usual, and I snatched a piece of chalk and started for my class room. I heard a shriek behind me. “Put that back! That’s our chalk. You’re a thief that’s what you are! You’re a thief!”
I looked around to see if I could help catch the thief, and saw Sister Haskell, one of the older (all adults were older to me in those days) sisters in our ward pointing her threatening finger at me.
Only she wasn’t in our ward any more as of the previous week. The ward had been divided, and so had the closet. I didn’t stop to figure that out. I just smiled and said, “Whatever.” Or whatever the 1955 version of “whatever” was.
I remembered later, but tossed it off. Even now I think she was trying to kill an ant with a sledge hammer. But still wish I hadn’t let her go to her grave thinking I was running an underground crime ring peddling stolen chalk.
Why didn’t I say something at the time? Youthful pig headedness I think. I didn’t cotton to the idea of humbly asking forgiveness of this screaming woman.
Same story, different scene: I am standing in the middle of my hay field by an irrigation ditch when a car comes speeding up the field toward me, stops and two men jump out. One I recognize as the water master who turns water into my ditch. The other man is a stranger to me. I hope he remains so from the look on his face. I take a firmer grip on my shovel handle in case it comes to that. I think it won’t because I have the law on my side in the form of the water master.
I already know the problem. Every week I order water from the canal. The water master turns it in, and this hydro-thief on the same ditch line sneaks up and opens his head gate half way to siphon off some of my water. He thinks I won’t notice because the canal head gate is way up a hill. Most people wouldn’t walk up to check if somebody upstream is stealing part of their water.
But I am not most people. Suspecting I was getting less than I had ordered, I have checked it out over several weeks. Always it is the same; a discretely half opened head gate is sending part of my stream to his reservoir. “The wheels of the (water) gods grind slow but exceeding fine,” as the saying goes, and he’s about to get his comeuppance.
They take their stance. The water master speaks first, “What do you think you’re doing. Every week you order a foot of water. He orders a half foot for his reservoir. I turn a foot and a half into the ditch, and open up his head gate to give him his share. You come along and close his gate and steal his water.”
I stand stunned, processing this new scenario. Instinctively accountability kicks in. I say nothing.
“Don’t let it happen again.” The water master and the water thief/victim jump back into the car, throw it into reverse and burn rubber out to the street and away.
My mind grinds slow and not exceeding fine. I think, “I am a voiceless idiot. Why didn’t I say something?”
Later that night I call my neighbor and add to the evidence of my guilt by offering to give him some of my water. He says, “I don’t need your water. I can take care of myself,” the implication being why don’t I do the same.
I go through several speeches I could have made. None of them would have solved the problem. They include to the water master, “Why didn’t you tell me that is what you were doing.” To which he would have said. “Everybody on the line but you knows how it works. You city slickers come out here and think you know everything.” Or I could have said to my water neighbor. “What would you think if you found somebody tapping water out of your stream? I figured you were stealing my water.” To which he would have said. “You calling me a thief? You better get a good grip on that shovel buddy. Nobody says that to me and gets away with it.”
The only response that might have worked would be, “Whoa, I am sorry. I didn’t know that’s how the system worked. I’m really embarrassed that I didn’t understand. I hope you will forgive me, and let me repay you the water that I took by mistake.”
They could have said, “You got that right Slick. You’re either stupid or lying. Don’t let it happen again.”
They might even have said, “Say aren’t you the same guy who stole chalk from Sister Haskell’s ward 56 years ago?”