Archive for October, 2002

• 10.22.02 Sunday, 22 October 2002:

  Before last week, I had never seen an animal being butchered. I somehow didn’t expect it to be so conveniently built. If you keep its legs perpendicular up while you’re working, nothing falls out, but if you want to get something out you only have to cut a couple tubes. The skin slips right off, whole, and makes a rug, so the floor doesn’t get bloody and the meat doesn’t get dirty. The blood also won’t shoot out, if only you wait long enough after you kill it before cutting, but collects conveniently, so you can spoon it right out. The appendix is easy to find, and easier than anything else to cut out and throw away, since it’s only attached on one end, and the intestines make very useful sacks for boiling meat and blood in. I expected myself to be disturbed, watching it, since the last time I saw anything nearly as grisly was my freshman year of college, when I couldn’t watch a set of heart and lungs getting cut up; but I showed disappointingly insensitive, this time. I wasn’t quite capable of touching it, and didn’t join the others (including a five-year old) in a piece of raw liver. But I only felt a little discomfort watching it getting cut up, and that was probably only because it was a sheep. If it had been something less sympathetic, it wouldn’t've bothered me at all, I’m sure.

  For example cows, I don’t like, and I like them less the more I see of them. They are willfully stupid and small-minded, suspicous creatures. They are completely unaware of how awkward they carry themselves, they are even proud of what they consider is their grace, although they’re always inadvertently blocking roads or stepping on dogs. They love to act superior and snort at me. But you can see they’re really terrified, they’re incapable of hiding the fear in their eyes.

  
  Tags: thinking, feeling.