4 ~ Wednesday, March 31, 1993 —- North Shore News

A confession from

“STRICTLY PERSONAL

I CONTINUE to be amazed by my own hypocrisy when it comes to the question of animal rights. Maybe i’m just a hypocritical - person all around, and don’t want to face it, but it sure becomes glaring in this particular regard. Sometimes I think it goes : beyond mere hypocrisy. My - behavior toward animals could fairly.be described as downright schizophrenic.

» itis a controlled schizophrenia. lam able to function in society. I’m not drinking myself to déath out of anguish about all the ir- resolvable paradoxes the issue of my relationship to other forms of life constantly raises...

. But it stares me in the face every day... Let me get the ugly stuff out of the way first. Confession: I'm a meat-eater, and I keep pets in cages and “tanks, For many years Irana hobby farm in the Anmore Valley, “on the east side of Indian Arn; across from Deep Cove, which means that I was personally — responsible for the murder of dozens of sheep, hundreds of turkeys and ducks and chickens,

NORTH VANCOUVER “CITY COUNCIL

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A 47-UNIT seniors’ housing com- plex by Wagg Park in North Van- couver City will go to a public hearing,. despite arguments at a March 22 city council meeting that ‘it contravenes the official com- munity plan and clashes with the single-family character of the area. !

Coun. Rod Clark said the ‘de- velopment, proposed for the southeast corner of 21st St. and Chesterfield Avenue, would ‘un- fairly use its parkside setting.

' “1 will not suppert development on the back of parkland in this ci- ty. Wage Creek Park will not éx- ist; it will become a courtyard for the seniozs’ development,’’ said Clark. ;

He cited the staff report, which said the high density of the pro- posed building would be ‘‘com- pensated by parkland,’’ as evi- dence.

The official community plan calls for single-family homes in the area, said Clark,

“If we are, supporting the of- ficial community plan on 23rd Street, we’d bloody better do it by _ Wagg Park,” he added. :

Council voted 6-1 in favor of holding a public hearing on the proposed development.

Clark cast the lone vote- against the hearing.

even a couple of geese, the most intelligent of them all.

“Meat-birds,"’ we called the males.

The very phrase makes you shudder, doesn't it?

As | often say to my kids, ‘‘Be glad you're at the top of the food chain, because anywhere below is hell.”’

The first time [ killed a chicken Tnearly kneecapped myself with the machete.

The chopping block was damp and rotten. The machete only cleaved half the neck and then got stuck in the wood, and the chicken was splashing blood all over and shrieking.

I had taken two shots of Te- quila to get my courage up be- forehand, to still the trembling in my hands.

Didn't work. I discom- bobulated.

it took an unbelicvably long time to finish the decapitation. | finally hacked through the last feathers, only to have the body stagger crazily off on its own, wings flapping as though trying to escape, while the head ended up like an ornament on top of the chopping block, eyes still totally alive, jaw moving angrily as it continued to shrick up at me. For the longest time.

More Tequila. After a while, I thought: Maybe ll just take them inid a slaughtering, ah, facility.

As for the sheep, I only got as far as page 2 of the manual on sheep-slaughtering techniques when [also decided to have them done in by pros. I'd just drive over after the deed was done and pick up.the veatly-packaged chunks.

Yet at home nowadays, nearly a decade later, parked in the middle of suburbia, | often find myself brooding over what to do about

‘my poor captive budgie and the

two surviving finches.

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I want to set them free, but can’t. The finches have been with us for four years. They're old. The two female finches both died.

The budgie is alone. The idea was, apparently — at least accord- ing to the pet-store owner — that the budgie would learn to trustingly crawl out on our fingers, and sit on our shoulders, and learn English, and be part of the famiiy,

But as soon as my daughter poked her finger in the cage, the budgie bit her, and that was essentially the end of that.

We decided to get him a mate, but you have to go through an elaborate (and expensive) two- cage introduction period. Can’t just throw them in together.

While we,wasted a lot of time

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trying to figure out whether he was a male or not, he developed a scaley condition on his beak, which we have been treating ever since, and can't bring another bird in until he’s cured.

So he continues to dwell all- but-silently in his lonely cage.

Pretty minor stuff in the scale of things, you say. I argue that the microcosmic mirrors the macrocasmic. You can learn a lot about the big problems of the world by studying you own very private behavior and habits.

Once thing is certain: if children’s books were written by animals, instead of humans, what a different portrayal of boys and gicls and adult humans we'd see!

Sometimes I'll be sitting around a table at a feast with friends, and

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we'll all be chortling happily,

while bones and vertebrae stick up out of wads of undigested fat, and severed rib-cages and wings are strewn about between us, and | find myself wondering what, precisely, is the difference between this scene and the sight of a pack of hyenas gorging themselves on a ripped-apart calf?

Well, there is the finesse of hav- ing cooked the carcass. 1 suppose that counts for something. And

table manners.

Otherwise, I’m rather uncertain about how much higher ! am on the scale of moral superiority or enlightened behavior, or even mere decency and dignity, than other ‘‘pitiless** predators, sca- vengers and carrion-eaters.

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