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The Super Bowl: No matter who wins, the chickens lose.

3 Feb The ladies at Snooters!
The ladies at Snooters!

The ladies at Snooters!

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. We all know what that means…

Actually, I don’t. I don’t have much of a tolerance for modern tribalism (let alone hyper-corporate modern tribalism). Nor do I care for football culture. I’ve never watched the Super Bowl. Does the winning team actually get a bowl? I couldn’t tell you much of anything.

Well, one thing I do know about the Super Bowl is that people become hyper gluttons over chicken wings. It’s all over the web, people hawking their ‘best’ chicken wing recipes, dishing on where the best deal is on wings (“per pound”). If you don’t believe me, just google “shortage of chicken wings” and sit back. Headlines said things like “US averts shortage of chicken wings”.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Isn’t “avert” a term we ought to reserve for like, really important things? Say, for example: averting an alien invasion! Or how about averting a global water crisis, or averting climate change?

While all talk of fetishizing animal products gives me the freaks, especially disturbing is the fact that unlike most kinds of meat, ‘chicken wings’ has avoided the almost inevitable dilution-through-euphemism transformation, where humans give a kind of  meat a new name to divorce it from the animal (or the part of the animal) it came from. This is the magical process whereby ‘ground meat, blood, fat and organs encased in intestine’ is transformed into the much less horrendous sounding, much more vague– ‘sausage’. But ‘chicken wings’ are just sort of out there, honestly talking about who they belonged to. And people just don’t seem to care.

And that is just wrong. Chickens are such incredible animals. I’ve yet to meet a chicken I didn’t like. The chickens I’ve met at sanctuaries always seem to be in a great mood, just out there genuinely happy to peck around with their sisters, cooing in that way that makes my whole body buzz with happiness. OK, I confess I really, really love chickens. I wrote a whole tribute to them. Here are my favourite things about chickens:

  • They experience REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which indicates that they dream, just like we do.
  • Even after periods of separation, chickens recognize each other as individuals, demonstrating their impressive memories. Upon reentry, a chicken who has been separated from her flock is treated like an old friend, not a new member.
  • Throughout history, hens have been notably celebrated for their ability (and willingness) to defend their young from predators, which makes it all the more surprising (and innaccurate) that the term ‘chicken’ describes someone who lacks bravery.

Years ago,  I was walking downtown on a Sunday morning, and I noticed a pile of chicken wing bones in front of the after-hours Chinese food place where all the drunk students go to get their post-bar binge on. Clearly someone had sat on the curb, ate to their content, and discarded the remnants. And in that moment, that little pile of half-eaten chicken’s wings so perfectly encapsulated what I myself was just beginning to see: that animals are truly seen as discardable, worthless, here to serve us; their body parts, our entitlement for being born human. I thought of how many lives were comprised of the bones in front of me, and it made me so sad and angry that I couldn’t think straight. I had stumbled upon a mass grave. Only it was a mass grave that people were walking past, with absolutely no consideration.

So when I think about the Superbowl, I think instantly about that day. I think about the poor chickens who didn’t make it out, and I think of the chickens who did. My favourite memory of chickens was the day I got to carry newly rescued hens out of the barn to their new outdoor enclosure on Snooters Farm Animal Sanctuary:

As rescued battery hens they had never before seen the outside, let alone sunlight! And yet, within 20 minutes two of them were exploring their new landscape. They were so afraid, but Susan and Brian had built them this new house, and the weather was finally perfect. Goodness me, it was a beautiful day. I dream of that day for all chickens!

Regardless of who wins tonight,  the chickens are the ones who lose.

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My Dad may be a robot (and a note about my great uncle)

22 Jan

Last week something strange happened. My Dad asked me for help. This likely does not seem worth mentioning, but that’s only because you don’t know my father. Let me paint a picture: he’s a stoic, stubborn German dude who emigrated to Canada and brought along with him many of the stereotypical aphorisms about life being relentlessly hard, and thankless work being the cornerstone of any financially secure life. I love my Dad, even if we don’t agree on– well, almost anything.

Take for example, not eating animals. My father has in his arsenal at all times, unsolicited advice about: protein, calcium, how good meat is for you, eating like our ancestors, how meat staves off illness, etc. He’s not rude, it’s just that food, like all other subjects, happens to be something he has a strong opinion on (even/especially if that opinion is based on folk nutrition, overvaluing tradition, cognitive dissonance, etc).

So you can imagine my surprise when last week on the phone, out of the blue, he starts telling me about what stops him from eating vegan (or at least mainly vegan). Had I been sipping a beverage, I would have spit it out. Had I been chewing gum, I’d have bitten off my tongue. Had I been with him in person, I’d have been looking for visible signs of circuitry. Who was this honest, vulnerable robot imposter and what did he do with my generally pessimistic, dismissive father?

{As an aside, I have three main theories about what happened: 1) He finally watched the copy of ‘Forks Over Knives’ I gave him two Christmases ago; 2) One of the vegans he works with rubbed off on him or 3) Aliens. As it stands, I haven’t asked him, and I could care less.}

We talked for quite a while. I dropped all the usual sound bites: the inherent violence of slaughter, cholesterol and saturated fats, environmental problems, and all the great alternatives that now exist. He told me the single greatest barrier to him eating vegan is: he cannot picture what he’d eat.

He told me when we took him to Hogtown Vegan (an AMAZING vegan restaurant in Toronto) he was super happy seeing that so many of his favourite foods could be veganized. He wants to see more of it, and frankly, I can’t really blame him. I want him to see all the great alternatives that exist because although we’d eventually like to see people eating a wide array of whole plant foods, you can’t ask someone who goes from eating a burger and fries to chow down on a quinoa salad with tempeh. They’ll give up before they even start. That’s not human nature, and such a rapid shift is simply not going to jive with the powerful pull of the human palette.

So my Dad asked me {*drum roll please*} if I would prepare enough dishes for his lunch and dinner for the week for him, and he’d come pick them up. That’s right. The guy who once told me fish is practically a vegetable is asking me for my culinary charity. He said he’ll gladly pay for it all, he just wants to experience what eating vegan could really be like, because he “knows” it’s better. I’M AS SHOCKED AS YOU.

So here’s where I ask you folks to help me, help my Dad. Please offer up your most delicious recipes in the comments section focused on these 3 main criteria:

  1. Taste! Give me the salt, the fat, the sweet. I don’t mean give me excessive amounts of it, but no fat-phobic recipes allowed!
  2. Familiarity! This is for a man in his 60’s who thinks iceberg lettuce is a superfood.
  3. Ease! Nothing too complicated as I’ll ultimately be teaching him to replicate the recipes himself, and apart from some OJ and a few bananas, his kitchen looks like a movie set, and his soup cupboard looks like a disorganized Andy Warhol exhibit.

I thank you in advance for this, and encourage you to keep checking back! I’ll be charting my Dad’s progress, and what worked/didn’t work.

One last aside: several months ago, my Dad told me that his uncle bought some cattle for his farm out in the prairies. His intention was, like all other farmers, to make money (to feed the cows until they were big enough to slaughter). But something happened to him. My great uncle became very attached to the cows and couldn’t send them to slaughter. So he kept them. He kept them and let them live out their natural lives, despite being laughed at by the rest of his Mennonite community. My Dad told this story with a sparkle in his eye, a sparkle that was just barely discernible at the time. I’m not one to overvalue genes, but between you and me: I love knowing that the blood that ran through my uncle’s veins in that more oppressive time, is running through mine, and that my decision to love animals instead of eating them is the next logical step in the refusal to send them to their death. I realized today that the same blood is also running through my father’s veins. And this makes me hopeful. For him, and for us all, and ultimately for the animals.

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If you’re hot today, consider this:

20 Jun

Our apartment is hot. Pockets of it have been cooled with the help of two used air conditioners, one for our guinea pigs in their room (they are especially sensitive to heat), and one for the rest of the apartment. Stepping outside those two delicious pockets is like being punched in the face by a hot, humid wall of awful. It is pure nasty, in air form. It literally makes a Jekyll and Hyde out of me, as I struggle to perform even the most mundane of tasks outside the pockets of cool without losing my cool.

Earlier today while brushing my teeth in the sauna (otherwise known as the ‘bathroom’), I was really feeling sorry for myself. You know how it goes, we’ve all been there. You’re upset about the heat, the discomfort, the sweating-from-areas-you-didn’t-think-could-sweat.

And then I thought about how I live in Canada, a country that doesn’t stop transporting animals to their death on days like this. In fact, in Canada, cows can be legally transported for 52 hours with no food, no rest, and no water. For pigs and chickens, it is 36 hours. Such suffering is not fathomable to us, either by scale or by duration. It is the purest proof of the total and utter lack of regard shown towards animals who are raised for food.

Lock your dog in a car on a hot day, and people will riot. They will call you a criminal (as they should). Roll a transport truck full of animals every bit as wonderful, unique and deserving of respect past those very same people and almost no one will even notice. Their suffering goes almost entirely unnoticed.

If you find your animal-eating friends, coworkers or loved ones complaining of the heat, you could do what I do: tell them how lucky they are not to be a farmed animal.

For more information on animal transportation in Canada, check out: http://www.wspa.ca/ati/CurbtheCrueltyReport.pdf

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Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday: so much life, in such a little body

7 May

Someone very dear to me passed away on Saturday night, and I am completely bereft. She embodied so many of the qualities I admire in a friend. She listened twice as much as she spoke, she was so humble despite her obvious specialness, and she was never the source of conflict. She was a quiet fighter, filled to the very brim with a darling innocence you had to experience to understand. Ruby was her name, and she was a guinea pig I was fortunate to share just over a year with.

Dear Ruby (right) hiding behind Abigail

I don’t know where Ruby came from, except to say that wherever it was, she hadn’t been shown much love by humans. The presence of a hand (even one offering food!) was enough to send both her and her sister Abigail running to the furthest corners of their pen. While Abigail is the more confident alpha, Ruby was the unassuming, shy girl, forever hiding behind her big sister. It was a slow process, but little by little, they began to trust us. They had no reason in the world to, but they did anyway. What an honour.

I had always felt a particular fondness for Ruby, though I love my other three ladies and their endearing idiosyncrasies too. But Ruby was the underdog. The smallest, the mildest, the first one butted away from the food. After the first time Ruby got sick (it turned out she had a massive bladder stone), I bonded with her in a way I just haven’t with other animals. Thanks to a rigorous medication schedule, I was literally able to help to make her well again. As her “nurse”, I felt our connection deepening, and I know she felt it too, as evidenced by the way she began to come flying towards me each time I came into the room, wheeking and squealing.

To love someone so small, someone who never grows out of their fragility, is such a unique experience. Holding a little 700 gram being in your hands, and so many times teetering on the edge of losing her, it was such a relief the way we always managed to bring her home again. And before you could say “who-wants-a-blueberry?” she’d be good as new, clucking and squealing and occasionally even popcorning.

Ruby was so strong. After passing that bladder stone, it was so undoubtedly painful that our vet welled up as she tried to describe what this must have felt like. We realized we had a real fighter in our midst.

I don’t want to write about what happened when she got sick this time. It is too fresh, too sad, too traumatic, too many questions still unanswered. No cancer, no heart disease, but instead, symptoms that indicated Addison’s Disease, which made her the first guinea pig on record to present with these symptoms. (Sadly, it could be that most people simply don’t allow their guinea pig to live long enough to present the symptoms.)

Though we’d nursed her back to health so many times, this time I instantly knew something different was wrong. I walked into their room, giving them their usual breakfast announcement (“Babies! Blueberrrrries!”) to which they all run out of the pen to greet me, trying to scamper up the side and out. But Ruby didn’t appear. Then I heard a quiet, muted squeal. A very subdued version of the squeal she always greeted me with in the morning, and I peered under the ramp and saw her. Her head heavy, her body limp. She looked as though she’d been paralyzed. Within five minutes we were en route to the emergency vet, and 48 hours later, mere moments after we arrived home from visiting her in the hospital, our vet called to say she had passed. Quietly, unassumingly–  she went just as she lived.

One of the greatest sadnesses about someone like Ruby dying, is that she was pure innocence. She existed in her own little way, caused no harm to anyone, and yet her life was cut mercilessly short, proof to me that the universe truly is cold and random. Eduardo Galeano talks about how we live in an “upside down” world, and the fact that the Rubys of the world are stolen so quickly, while those profiteering from violence and oppression can (and often do) live lives too long and too effortless, is all the proof I need of such a fact.

Ruby mattered. She’ll always matter to me. I deeply hope she knew that. There are so many things I wish I could tell her, and make her understand.

Ruby, did you know how much I love you? Did you know how much you matter to me? How dear your every squeal was? I have memorized all of you, and play it back to myself now. Your timid approach from out of your hutch, nose held high, trying to sort out what it was I had for you. I knew your call from your sisters’ distinctly, even from the other end of the apartment. Do you know how very special each thing about you is to me?

What do I do now with all that’s left? Where does all the love I have for you go?  It certainly doesn’t dissipate into thin air, but it isn’t something I can simply transfer into someone else. Well, that may not be entirely true. The only true moments of peace I have known since you got sick were when we walked the dogs along the bluffs, or through Cherry Beach. All my other time requires the utmost distraction, or I come apart at the very remembrance of your passing, like a punch in the stomach I can count on again and again. Undone by the smallest reminder of you, finding the wash cloth I wiped your mouth with so many times (when we had to feed you Critical Care). The stains are still there. I’ve tucked it away into one of my drawers, I could never just go on using it again. I’ll keep it with me always, as a reminder of you, that you were a good and beautiful person who existed, and as a symbol of the purest kind of love that is possible: unflinching, unwavering, steadfast love. On days when I cease to remember that I am capable of good things, I’ll look at that washcloth, and remember how many times I snuck into your room, to give you your medicine, how I fell in love with the way you looked when I rolled you in a towel and laid you on your back to feed you. I will remember that I was your guardian, and I did my best to give you a good life. No amount of money would have stopped us from trying to heal you, nor would the looks from people who just didn’t understand it.

Ruby, I was your guardian, the one who kept you fed and safe and warm and content. Hopefully, you were even happy most of the time. I think you probably were. I was the guardian of your gorgeous life, and for the rest of my days, I will be the guardian of your sweet memory. You will never be forgotten, not for a moment. Sadly, this is the closest thing to immortality we can offer one another, dear sweetheart. I will never forget who you are. Ruby, you are gone from this world, but you are not gone inside me.

If you have ever loved a guinea pig, or any other mammal for that matter, please consider familiarizing yourself with the issue of vivisection (animal experimentation). You’ll be shocked to learn that so many of the things we use on a daily basis are tested on animals just like Ruby. Check out an old blog post about this here, as well as the must-see-forthcoming film Maximum Tolerated Dose. My interview with the director Karol Orzechowski can be found here. If you currently love a guinea pig, please ensure they have lots of space, the best quality hay and pellets, and the comfiest digs a pig could hope for. And please– adopt, don’t buy your companions!

“We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle; easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we would still live no other way.”- Irving Townsend

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Animal companions & why “buying” them is brutal: an adopters’ manifesto

25 Jan

Anna is one of my dearest friends, and she is a hero to animals everywhere. We do lots of things when we’re together. Mostly we eat and then talk about what we just ate. But recently, we wrote this piece on an issue very close to our hearts: companion animals.

What do you call it when someone painlessly ends the life of another who is suffering from an incurable condition (often at the patient’s own request)? Unfortunately, this isn’t the set up to some hilarious joke. What you get, according to the trusty Oxford Dictionary, is euthanasia.

The people who wrote the Oxford Dictionary are probably pretty smart, and they seem to think that euthanasia is killing someone for his or her own good, because death has become a better option than incurable suffering. But we find ourselves a wee bit confused: why do we describe shelters as “euthanizing” healthy animals? That doesn’t sound like euthanasia to us or to the Oxford Dictionary for that matter. That sounds more like killing: to deprive of life or vitality; to put to death; to cause the death of (Oxford, FTW!).

Ever the stalwarts of accurate discussions, we use the word “kill” when we discuss this issue, because that is what we are doing to companion animals. And we hope this doesn’t make you uncomfortable. We’ll leave it to you to speculate as to why the euthanasia euphemism has become so commonplace (but it likely has something to do with the uncontrollable guilt that would come with acknowledging that we kill perfectly healthy animals en masse, despite as a culture claiming to value them).

According to the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, in 2008:

  • 54% of the cats taken in by shelters were killed.
  • 19% of the dogs taken in by shelters were killed.

But let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: this is not the fault of shelters. By and large, shelters are running on tight budgets, staffed by generous and compassionate volunteers, and doing largely thankless (and emotionally depleting) work that remains invisible to most of us (which is just fine for most people).

Shelters all too often find themselves in a nightmarish predicament of providing shelter for some animals while taking the lives of some other animals, to make room for still other animals. Is there really such a shortage of space for animals, you ask? Consider this: in Toronto alone there are between 100,000 and 300,000 homeless cats, many of whom were dumped on the streets by guardians who lost interest in caring for them. Extrapolate that number out, and you can see that the number of animals in need of homes is so enormous that purposely bringing more animals into existence just to make a buck is, quite literally, insane. Oxford-dictionary-style insane.

If aliens were to come to earth (and decide not to obliterate/colonize us) they’d have some serious questions that we may not have decent answers for. After no doubt expressing disgust at the way we harm and kill animals for food even though we don’t have to, they’d probably say (telepathically of course): “why create more life when there are already so many who need the love and companionship of a human family?” And despite our own demonstrable capacity for intelligence and empathy, most people would seem like absolute fools when we can’t even answer. We’d completely embarrass ourselves in front of the aliens, who would have it confirmed in an instant that not only are we not the smartest beings in the universe, we’re not the most empathetic either.

Anna's companions: Roxy & Lola! Roxy was adopted from the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue and Lola from a man holding a cardboard box in the alley next to my house!

And before you say, “Well I’m not a breeder, so I’m off the hook!” we’ve got news for you, courtesy of every Economics 101 class that’s ever happened, ever: if you demand it, the market will provide it. That means that if you think it’s acceptable to purchase animals from pet stores or private breeders, some idiot out there will supply your demand. And the opposite is also true. Take a look at Albuquerque, New Mexico, which banned the sale of cats and dogs in 2006. Animal adoptions have increased by 23 per cent, while the rate of animals killed at shelters has decreased by 35 percent.

Let’s break down some of the problems with our system of creating animals, abandoning them in shelters or on the streets, killing them, and then creating more new animals:

  1. Animals aren’t here for us. This is axiomatic. While we mutually enjoy life with companion animals, their actual existence has nothing to do with us.
  2. If we acknowledge that animals don’t exist for us, then we also must acknowledge that it is not our right to choose when they die.
  3. If we acknowledge that because animals don’t exist for us and therefore we shouldn’t have control over when they die, we must also acknowledge that a system that decides how one in every two cats dies, and how one in every five dogs dies, is a flawed system in dire need of a committed, emergency overhaul.

It also illuminates an inconvenient, but unavoidable reality: your superficial want for a Labradoodle is grossly outweighed by the right to live that all animals have. Frankly, it’s just too damn bad for you.

Oh, and it’s also too damn bad for the “responsible breeder” (hereby dubbed the ‘responsibreeder’). Why aren’t we more empathetic to the well-intentioned responsibreeder, you ask? Truth bomb: The responsibreeder is fictitious. Non-existent. Think Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or that sister you invented to get out of office work parties. There is no such thing as a responsibreeder, as the very definition of “responsible” means “having an obligation to do something, or having control over or care for someone, part of one’s job or role”. If we consider notions of responsibility on a community level (as we ought to), then the only responsible breeder is a breeder who is not breeding.

OK, so you’ve read this far. And you may even be in a position of wanting to bring home a new furry family member. Before heading out to meet Sandy, who owns the certified-accredited-organic-fair-trade-gluten-free-pedigreed Sunny Oakridge Autumn Harvest Labralove Kennel, we dare you to Google your local animal shelter or humane society and check out all the wonderful individuals who are literally waiting for their second chance.

If even after looking into the eyes of an animal who may be sentenced to an unnecessary death (read: killed), you choose to purchase an animal from Sandy, the charismatic responsibreeder (who assures you she’s doing it for the love of dogs), there’s not much we can do. But one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that you are not an animal lover. You’re an animal collector.

My Millie: one of my 9 companions! We fell in love with her the moment we met her at the Toronto Humane Society.

And for those of us who opt out of the canine version of Toddlers and Tiaras, remember that there is always an animal out there who is wonderful and who needs a home. Your home. You can be a total superhero for that animal. As for what we, as animal advocates, can do, this is some stuff we prioritize:

  • Fix your companions! There is no excuse. By understanding there are more animals already than there are people willing to adopt, fixing your companion will ensure you’re not contributing to their already staggering population.
  • Don’t reward superficial people with superficial comments! One thing we always try to keep in mind is that people who purchase dogs do so in large part because of the dogs’ aesthetic qualities (their squished faces, for example). We make a point of never dwelling on an obviously purebred feature (especially once that compromises the animal’s wellbeing) when talking to their humans because we feel like doing so validates the humans’ decision to buy instead of adopt. That doesn’t mean we are not super tender with the actual animals, we just refuse to reward their human companions for shallowness. (As one reader pointed out however: keep in mind that there are breed-specific rescue groups though!)
  • Rescue talk! When people remark about our animals, or even when strangers simply find out that we live with animals, we always make a point of talking about where we adopted them from. Remember– even though it seems bizarre to us, there is a serious stigma surrounding rescue animals. Every second we talk about our companions is an opportunity to myth-bust!
  • Insure your pet! Having an illness or injury that is expensive to treat should never be a reason to end a companion’s life. By insuring your pet (or setting up a savings system so you’re already emergency-ready), you’re ensuring a long and happy life together by taking away much of the stress of covering expensive medical costs. And if you’re considering adopting an older animal, expect medical bills and for insurance to be a bit more expensive.

In closing, shopping is what you do when you need a new toothbrush, or run out of balsamic vinegar. It is not what you do when looking for a companion. So be a superhero. Adopt! Rescues rule!

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