Blame the Ice Age

It was a caveman who made me an almost-vegetarian. I kid you not. Somewhere, in the annals of time, a prehistoric human named Uggh bears responsibility for the fact that I no longer eat chicken, pork, beef, etc.

Here's my philosophy. Back in the old times, long before Trader Joe's or Whole Foods Market or Gourmet magazine, humans had to hunt and seek for their food. Literally. They had to drag their butts out of their caves, pick a few bugs off their mate in a wholesome goodbye, and go off to the Great Unknown to find sustenance.

In good times, Uggh and her buddies (yeah, the women provided most of the food, even way back then) were not stupid. They went with what was available—wild grains, nuts, berries, greens. As far back as 50,000 BCE, cave dwellers were leaving their trash behind—seeds of wild dates and nuts from the period have been found in Northern Iraq. They also ate fish, shellfish, mushrooms, eggs, and insects—easily attainable protein sources that didn't require a lot of violence to acquire. The "hunter-gatherers" of Neolithic times were more scavengers than hunters. The first steak dinner in history was probably some poor animal charred in a natural fire, found by a tribe of marauding humans.

But sooner or later, bad times always come. Around 20,000 BCE, the Ice Age hit and, well, things got a bit ugly. Uggh and her hunter-gatherer friends weren't going to find food just lying around—even the sturdiest of plants are going to have trouble surviving the frozen wilds. Let's face it, not even the saber-tooth tigers, mammoths, and mastadons could stand more than about 10,000 years of the stuff—they went extinct around 10,000 BCE.

So Uggh and her tribe were confronted with what we in the South like to call A Situation. There were quite a few humans running around the planet at this time, and precious little freely growing foodstuffs to share amongst them. So our human ancestors did what they normally do in times of crisis—they improvised.

The first thing they did was take the risk factor out of food. That means agriculture. No more random searching for wild seeds and nuts—our little human population decided to plant their own dang seeds and nuts, nurture them, and harvest them. Yup. Our ancestors were pretty clever about that sort of thing. Along with agriculture came side benefits like communities, settlements, culture, etc.

Good stuff.

But not everybody lived in Paradise. Many of our ancestors lived in very cold climates, where growing your own millet wasn't really an option. And they were hungry. And they were inclined to survive, as most species are.

So they did what any species will do to survive--that being, well, anything. Soon, instead of waiting for nature to provide a nice roasted corpse, they started getting their own. They invented weapons. They created macho rituals surrounding the hunting of larger and larger animals to slice up and eat.

And it was good.

Really, I'm a vegetarian, and I think this was good. Our ancestors survived, and it was good, and all those lives that were sacrificed to keep the human race going were not lost in vain. Humans, being very clever and resourceful animals, made use of all parts of the animals—the bones, the fur, the teeth, the flesh. In a way, much of our civilization is based on what we created from animals. We should be grateful. And for a long time, we were.

But things got easier, the weather got warmer, and humans got smarter. Soon, somebody figured out that, if we can do it with plants, we can do with animals. And the first domesticated animals for eating came about. Yay. Now we don't even have to risk our lives to get a chop or a steak—just go out in the back field and kill a sheep or cow.

And more time passed, and things got easier. Sooner or later, you didn't even have to kill your own sheep or cow. You had a butcher to do that for the entire village. You'd go to his shop, and see the bloody carcasses hanging in all their glory, and wow, you had dinner for a month.

When I decided to become a vegetarian, the process for acquiring meat was thus: pick up the phone. Dial restaurant of choice. Order. Pay money. Meat of some variety (usually in the form of pizza or Chinese food) will come to your house in under 30 minutes, or it's on us!

The day I became a vegetarian, I thought a lot about cave men. About what it took to acquire and prepare meat to consume. I thought a lot about what it meant to take another life—to hunt, kill, and slaughter another living creature.

And I thought about what I, personally, would be able to kill.

Plants? Unfortunately, yes. They are so far from what I understand as sentient that I can do it. And please don't start on screaming vegetables, etc. I know they are alive. I am aware of this. And it sickens me that anything has to die so I can live, even a potato.

Fish? Yes. I fished when I was a kid. I went crawfishing at my grandfather's pond, and ran crab lines in the Gulf of Mexico. I knew how to catch them and clean them, and I knew precisely what it meant to look into the eyes of the creature you were about to eat.

Chicken? Um, no. I have never been a fan of chickens, per se. They're mean, nasty, smelly birds who will peck you as soon as say hello. They're loud and bothersome. But kill one? Me? Take my hands and kill a chicken? Not going to happen.

Same with pigs, goats, cows, you name it.

And I decided that day, May 15, 1999, that unless I was prepared to look it in the eye, kill it, clean it, and cook it, I didn't have the right to eat it.

I also decided that if the next Ice Age came and the only thing between me and starvation was my ability to off a chicken, that bird was going down.

But we're not there yet.