My mother stopped giving me beef in late grade school or early high school. She called the doctor and told him that I vomited every time I ate meat. “Don’t give it to her,” he allegedly advised. I don’t know if that’s exactly what happened or if it’s one of those memories that time created for me, but I haven’t eaten red meat since then.
I attended college in the mid-70s when there were two types of plant-based diets: Vegetarian, and lacto-ovo vegetarian. I chose the latter path, because what is life without eggs and butter? Truthfully, I struggled with the rest of it. I’m not much of a cook, and the mainstay of vegetarians, beans, upset my stomach. This annoying proclivity later morphed into full-blown IBS though I didn’t develop an insufferable intolerance of legumes and dairy until my mid-40s. For decades, nuts, seeds, eggs, lentils and yogurt comprised my primary protein sources.
My choice of food did not reflect any moral underpinning. I ate what my body could process. Sometimes I tried chicken and occasionally pork or fish, but only rarely and never without profound intestinal regret. I had vegan friends who rolled their eyes at my shallow disregard for other beings. I once dated someone who said he couldn’t be around me if I continued to eat anything not plant-based. I cautioned him not to make me choose between him and butter. I reminded him that some scientists believe that plants scream when you cut them. He faded from my life, messaging that he would pray for me. Nice of him.
It’s late winter in Northern California. The snow geese and sandhill cranes settle in the flooded fields of our island. Dark Canadians cut through the grey sky between bouts of torrential rain. I regret letting my camera batteries grow so old that they no longer hold a charge. I linger on the levee roads, watching the wide swathes of fluttering white creatures forage in the ruts left by the fall harvest. They lift from the ground in twos or threes and land a few feet away, searching in the standing water for food. Overhead, the raucous cry of cranes signals the approach of nightfall.
Friends recently debated the merits of hunting snow geese on someone’s social media feet. My fingers hammered a harsh protest against killing the beautiful fowl. Someone replied with a long tirade about the virtues of snow geese as game and their vast numbers, which he apparently thought would persuade me. I briefly thought of my cousin Kati, who runs a pig rescue operation and foreswears anything not strictly vegan. I typed my short response: I don’t eat meat; and left the conversation.
Driving to Lodi today, I saw row after row of the migratory birds cutting through the air over soggy fallow fields. My heart swelled with envy as their long formation disappeared near the distant horizon. I closed my eyes and sent a silent plea: Let no hunters find them. Let them journey onward unmolested.
I had sweet potato and carrots for dinner tonight. No creatures suffered for my nourishment. I will have farm-fresh eggs for breakfast, scrambled with butter from cows that I can only hope were housed in comfort. I understand that not everyone likes the geese, and I recognize that many people hunt to eat. As for myself, I never tire of their noisy arrival in the open land behind our park. I do not weary of the sight of the flock rising at dawn, spreading their wings, and riding the wind to the next destination in their perennial search for a warmer, more welcoming climate. I regret only that I remain earthbound as they glide across the sky and leave me standing alone, in the relentless morning rain, wishing that I could fly.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
The Missouri Mugwump®
