I grew up on a farm in NE PA, we had animals around, but only a few pets. One of the first things I learned to do was differentiate between Pets and Livestock. We had two dogs a smattering of cats, some cows, pigs and chickens.
You learn right away that Dogs and Cats are fine to have as pets, but Cows, Chickens and Pigs are not pets....my sister always had a problem with this. But then again she also thought that Deer were pets too (but then we did have a pet deer growing up as well).
To quote from one of my favorite movies "Babe" "Oh dear, don't you know what pigs are for? They're for eating. Oh I'm sorry, did I say something to upset you?" Yep that's right, cows, pigs and chickens (at least on our farm) were for eatin' not for making best friends.
Every year for Easter our parents would buy us a calf or a piglet and we'd get to raise it for the year and then come autumn time...shoot that guy in the head and eat them all winter. Well granted, I never killed an animal, we always left that up to my dad - who for some reason had no problem killing a cow...hmmmmmm.....I don't have a problem eating it, I just have a problem killing it.
One year when we got calves, my sister got a Blue Holstein or something like that...but the black in it's coat was so dark that it was literally Blue, she named it Selsun Blue.
My sister always had a difficult time eating her 'friends' the rest of us were big old carnivores! Whenever we'd slaughter a cow my sister wouldn't eat ANY meat (even chicken) for fear that it was her cow.
I remember one time a "citified" aunt came to visit, a week earlier my dad had killed one of the cows and it was hanging in the barn to dry out and age(that's what you do, honest) my aunt came in and saw it and asked "What is that?" My Dad told her that was beef, she didn't believe him. She said that "beef comes from the grocery store on that little styrofoam plate." HONEST, she did...I was there!
We did have pets we didn't eat though, we had a cat named Motor - because it purred so much, a dog named Red - because it was red, and a dog named Hair - because it was a poodle and had a lot of hair. I know, not very imaginative names, but I had friends who named their dog Deeojee (d-o-g).
Once I moved away from home I had two cats, but unfortunately due to a room-mates allergies I had to send them to the farm to live - literally they went to a farm, not "The Farm." But I don't have any pets now, my room-mate does, but I don't (We'll talk more about that beast later).
The point of my post today was to warn you about not dying around your pets, especially like THIS GUY please be careful out there with your pets folks!
So do you have a pet? Have you ever eaten a pet?
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6 comments:
For my clan on the farm it would be very bad if I were a vegetarian. They always check how much meat I put on my plate. Being gay is no problem, but being vegetarian would call for severe measures.
My dad grew up on a farm in Finland, and he pretty much never differentiated between pets and livestock. When I was a kid, we had a parakeet named Penny. It eventually got old and appeared to be suffering. My dad took old Penny out to the garage and we never saw her (?) again. I asked him later what happened to Penny, and he said he put a cloth over it and bashed it with a hammer.
He now denies it...
P.S. God bless aged beef!
Your imagination is/was fine ...
Growing up our cats were called ... Puss, Kitten & Tom ... yes seriously thats what they were called.
I now have a Yorkshire Terrier called Jake. No reason ... I just always wanted a Yorkie called Jake.
- Ditsy
(forgotten my password for blogger *shrug*)
Gomad - I can only imagine!
TBF - We never had "little" pets like that.
Ditsy - I've seen your pix, fab!
I've always wondered how aged beef doesn't go bad?
ooh! ooh! ooh! I finally read the link.
Our neighbor had two dogs and died alone in his house. The dogs were hungry and there was nothing else for them except.....
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