I have been a bleeding-heart animal lover since I was a little kid. By age 9, I would go around springing the mousetraps that my dad had set in the basement. When the mice came up to the kitchen, I argued, “We have plenty of food. Why can’t we share?” The next year when they showed “Old Yeller” to my fifth-grade class, I cried so hysterically at the end that I had to be removed from the class. After thunderstorms in the summers, I spent hours on my family’s blacktop driveway rescuing earthworms who would otherwise shrivel into dried brown squiggles. It was no surprise to anyone when I announced at age 14 that I was now a vegetarian.

Being a vegetarian child in a family of meat eaters was no small feat, and I lived in constant fear of my mother somehow sneaking meat into my food. It was a constant struggle for me to explain to my mom that I didn’t want to pick the pepperoni off the pizza or the bacon out of the beans because the meat “juice” contaminated the ethics of my vegetarianism. When I finally moved to college and got my own apartment, I reveled in the fact that my kitchen was meat-free. For the past 10 years I haven’t had to worry about what is going into or out of my refrigerator. As an adult, I do the grocery shopping, and I’m free to eat what I please. As far as animals go, my conscience is relatively clean.

When my daughter Ayden was born, my mom asked me if I was going to raise her to be a vegetarian. I told her I was, and my mom said it was unfair of me to impose my diet on my daughter. I thought about that and agreed Ayden will eventually have to decide for herself, but I decided to indoctrinate her to my vegetarian ways every chance I got. I mean, what’s the point of being a parent if you can’t try to brainwash your child into thinking like you?

I started early. Ayden was just over a year old and not even forming complete sentences when I put my plan into effect. We were in the car, happily singing along to a tape of children’s songs when a big tractor-trailer full of crates of chickens passed us going about 80 miles an hour. It was January and the temperature was around 20 degrees. My heart sank. I sped up and followed the truck at a safe distance.

“Do you see that big truck sweetheart?” I asked.

“Uh huh,” she responded.

“Do you know what’s in there?”

“Uh huh.”

“Chickens. Do you know what sounds chickens make?”

“Uh huh.”

“Brock brock,” I said giggling, “I like chickens. Don’t you?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you know what’s going to happen to those chickens? They’re going to be eaten. Poor chickens,” I said sadly.

“Poor chickens,” she echoed.

“But we don’t eat chickens, do we?”

“Noooo,” she said, “Poor chickens.”

I smiled with satisfaction at my “lesson,” and I slowed to my normal speed and let the truck disappear into the distance. Every time we passed a dead chicken that had somehow fallen out of the truck and landed on the road, Ayden and I repeated in a sing-song voice, “Poor chicken.”

Now that Ayden is 3, I’ve enlisted various children’s movies in my cause. Despite the sexist overtones, “Bambi” is an obvious choice to get my message across that humans shouldn’t kill animals for their enjoyment. An even better choice is “Babe,” which is quite explicit in its condemnation of factory production and slaughtering of pigs. But my favorite is “Chicken Run,” in which the chickens narrowly escape the potpie factory of the evil Mrs. Tweedy. The film has even brought back our old refrain: “Poor chickens.” I bought the video.

While I feel confident that my vegetarian message is coming across loud and clear, I sometimes worry that she will be misled by others. Her daycare gets its meals from the local high school, and though I’ve told them she is vegetarian and pack a sandwich for her everyday, I am a little uneasy about the “just pick it off” mentality of non-vegetarians. Likewise, I have been concerned that Ayden might not always identify what is and what is not meat. For example, I buy the soy bacon that looks and tastes like real bacon. The other morning at breakfast I started to panic as Ayden asked for extra bacon. “Oh no,” I thought, “what if she thinks she can eat bacon at daycare?!” I immediately made her solemnly promise to only consume bacon within the confines of our home. She nodded while munching away, and I felt much better.

When I take her to the grocery store, I go through the aisles pointing out the good and bad things to eat. At Wal-mart we stop and watch the lobsters in the tank, and I tell her how sad they are to be in there. As we walk by the meat department I screw up my face and make repeated gagging noises, retching and saying “yuck” like I’m about to vomit. Ayden thinks it’s hilarious and imitates me. Other shoppers look at us strangely as we noisily puke our way down the aisle.

I know that these things work in cycles and that, at age 14, Ayden will likely come to me and declare herself a carnivore. Perhaps when she is older I will take her to the slaughterhouse so she will have a better idea of what animals go through to become a BigMac, or send her to live with Buddhists in China so she will learn not to eat a soul in the process of reincarnation. But perhaps I will just let her be and hope that she will learn to love animals and not to eat them.

(Esther Godfrey teaches history at Western Carolina University. Readers can contact her at egodfrey@wcu.edu)

 

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