Beginning in late August ‘09, I began to think about the turkey we’d roast for Thanksgiving. My body seems to work best with a diet that includes moderate amounts of meat, But what I know about animal consciousness, the science that backs it up, and from my own meaningful experiences with animals, it's becoming more difficult to reconcile my self with my diet of habit. It’s especially difficult for me with birds. Still, I reason that animal fuel keeps me going, doing animals good, lots of good, along the way. So, in anticipation of our Thanksgiving celebration and the turkey I knew we’d roast, I embarked upon a series of meditations of thankfulness to God for Andromeda, the “doomed dragon food.” (Hopkins) I wanted to honor Andromeda, to have her feel my thankfulness from hatching to market and to know my gratitude.
As I iron the table-cloth I think of Andromeda; as I clean and prepare; as I check recipes and plan the menu, I connect with Andromeda’s spirit, blithe and bird-like.
During shopping, Andromeda’s body presents itself clearly to me and in a moment goes into the grocery basket, then home. Andromeda’s spirit is gone from the frozen carcass, I know it, but still I send humble gratitude to her and to the flocks caught in commerce, millions farmed this or that way. I fill the sink with cold water and thaw the heavy-chested body.
Everyone who’s prepared a turkey for roasting knows about retrieving the giblets, packed as they are in the body cavities: heart, liver, gizzard and neck present themselves for the feast. The heart is smaller than a walnut, puny for an animal who, empty of innards, weighs 22.5 pounds. I know Andromeda wasn’t active; a better life awaits her, I hope. The aorta pokes out the top of the heart and it also pokes out both ends of the neck. I begin gravy preparations.
Before it’s time to dress the bird, I prepare all surfaces because I know the risks of infections. So, I’m careful to contain and clean. In the freshly scrubbed sink, the body is fully unwrapped.
Marks – hook marks -- pierce the thin muscles on the back. The right wing is blotched red with a large fresh bruise, broken bone palpable underneath. Stray feathers need plucking.
Suddenly, I know that the prayers and meditations, the thanks and gratitude, these were for me, for myself, to assuage me: palliatives to guilt and denial. Was gratitude an anesthetic during routine beak amputation? Did prayers negate the pains of injuries? Were meditations a shield from terror? No, no and no. Disabled, hung upside down while still alive, flapping her ineffective wings – along with millions more just like her. Collective hysteria. Then silence.
The body tells the real story. There in my sink was the result of my mind games.
Nothing blithe and bird-like at all. Andromeda, reduced to a commodity; something to eat; flesh to be consumed for the benefit of my flesh.
We sat, we over-fed humans, and feasted without a word of thanks to the roasted Andromeda, which I guess is as it should be because now is not the time of words, but action. Vegetarianism will be less of an adjustment for my body than the reverse was for Andromeda’s.