By Neil Steinberg
“Jumpy” is my oldest son’s tree frog. He is misnamed, in that he does not jump. He barely moves, preferring to bask under a heat lamp, awaiting his next live cricket. Even with lunch skittering about the cage, Jumpy barely bats an eye. Eventually the cricket crawls by his mouth and is eaten.
Such is nature. Frogs — whether in a tank on a little boy’s dresser or on the limb of a sky-scraping tree in Peru — doze through life waiting for lunch to blunder by. I suppose many of us do.
I have a very hard time believing that, were Jumpy in a forest, his life would be much different. He would not be ogling the trees and sighing, “Lovely.’’ He’s a frog.
Yet some people would claim we are oppressing Jumpy. That he is debased, being owned by my son. He’s not inert, they’d say, he’s depressed. Pining for Peru.
That’s nonsense. He’s better off on the dresser. No predators. No fear his crickets won’t show up on time, not with my entire family bustling to bring him a steady diet, to mist his cage constantly and do everything but take Q-tips and wipe his little green hiney.
Whether you find Jumpy fortunate or oppressed decides where you come down on the animal rights debate. Most people, secure in their personhood, eat meat, wear leather and keep pets. Yet a small but very vocal minority try to mask their sneering disregard for humanity with a concern for animals so extreme it would look exaggerated in a silent movie. Accompanying their disdain for people is a self-righteous delusion that they alone are saving the planet. They believe each time you eat a soy burger the Earth gives you a big grinning thumbs up.
So a week ago, I decided to strike back by eating in as un-P.C. a manner as I could and explained this in my last dispatch. Indulge in forbidden meats. Horse, if I could find it. Whatever the law allowed.
The e-mail, as you can imagine, has been huge. Notes from readers coast to coast and as far away as China. Ingrid Newkirk, founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, oddly offered to send a fur coat. Send away, I replied.
The majority, I’m happy to say, were from those relieved to have the constant animal rights nagging interrupted with a note of dissent. They are eager to share in my adventures. So here goes:
FRIDAY: I lie in bed and plot out breakfast. My impulse is to stroll into the boy’s room and munch one of Jumpy’s crickets. That strikes me as a bold declaration of intent, seasoned with a subtle stab at Disney’s vexatious Jiminy Cricket. “Just let your conscience be your….’’ CRUNCH!
I’m girding myself to do it, when my wife stirs, so I run my plan by her. “That’s disgusting,’’ she says, and I admit she may have a point. Instead, I eat breakfast at the Tokyo Lunch Box, where I do my share in the despoiling of the oceans with tuna and salmon sushi.
Mmmm, fresh. My e-mail pals stress how much impact their decisions make, but for each tread-lightly vegetarian in the U.S. there are a thousand Asians who’d dice the last whale on earth into cubes and eat it on vinegared rice without a second thought.
As I break apart my chopsticks, I can’t help but ruefully smile. Chopsticks are the most earth-unfriendly part of any meal. China alone produces some 60 billion pair a year and experts fear soon the entire country will be deforested doing so. This of course never registers to green types, since Disney has yet to make a movie starring a pair of white-gloved chopsticks. Too bad. Think of all the smug Northwestern co-eds pounding back a sanctimonious dinner of vegetarian chop suey, thinking they are saving Farmer Brown’s chickens from slaughter, when in reality they are helping turn the planet into a desert.
SATURDAY: At lunch I repair to a local spot called C.J.’s Lounge for a $1 draft beer and a steak sandwich. Really good — tender, hot, on a fresh roll. Beef, perhaps because it’s so delicious, is the No. 1 bugbear of PETA, though the “Meat is Murder’’ argument is based on a fallacy: that were the cow not slaughtered to make this very tasty steak, Bessie would still be in a field cavorting with her bovine pals. The truth is that nearly every cow alive owes its existence to either the meat or dairy industries, and that should the fad of vegetarianism ever really affect these businesses, the result would be that animal lives would be lost, not gained.
SUNDAY: On that note, on to McDonald’s, the belly of the beast for the cow-hugging set. They hate McDonald’s because it grinds up more beef than anything else, and because it is embraced abroad. This irks those who, indoctrinated by the adult version of Disney cartoons, National Public Radio, are morally opposed to any foreign cuisine that isn’t a corn tortilla baked on a hot stone. I order a cheeseburger. I can’t say it’s good — this is still McDonald’s. But it suffices.
MONDAY: Veal stew. The calves, apparently, live their lives in these little stalls, thus making their meat more tender. This breaks the hearts of certain people. Though, having seen plenty of cows in the field, they’re pretty stationary animals; they make Jumpy seem like Gregory Hines. So one has to wonder just how much suffering is truly involved.
My wife initially balks.
“Judaism believes in the humane treatment of animals,’’ she says, but gives in, buys the veal, and serves it up in a stew of carrots and peas, over thick slices of bread. Very savory. Chewing luxuriously, I try dangling the mental image of a calf in its little stall. Not a qualm. And veal tastes better than beef, so the sacrifice is not in vain.
TUESDAY: Time to up the ante. I visit a five-star restaurant for a feast of foie gras, a slice of the livers of geese force fed until they nearly burst. During the next 2-1/2 hour meal, I eat my way through a glittering array of sinful preparations — cured foie gras au torchon with caramelized pears and a truffle vinaigrette; lingonberry foie gras draped in 24 karat gold foil; chocolate foie gras on Gran Marnier French toast — washed down with Sauternes.
The chef doesn’t use the force-fed geese, but a breed of Moulard duck that gorges itself continually, left to its own devices. (Who doesn’t?) I have to admit I’m completely won over.
WEDNESDAY: After all that foie gras, food isn’t really a priority. Breakfast is a slice of toast. Later in the day, I stop by my liquor store, to see what kind of totalitarian regimes I can support.
I settle on a bottle of Barbancourt, my favorite rum, the finest the cruel Haitian kleptocracy can produce. Oh well. It’s not as if we don’t put money into the pockets of the fascist Chinese Communist mega-state with every pair of pants we buy. It’s a small world after all.
THURSDAY: My efforts to locate horse steaks have fallen flat. So I close out the week with a Tang and aerosol cheese party in my office: a tribute to highly processed food. Newkirk’s fur arrives, smelling of mothballs and beautifully painted with a large bunny on the back and “FUR HURTS’’ carved into the mink. I thank Newkirk and tell her I’m going to give it to a female reporter. She surprises me by asking for it back — apparently they sent an “art’’ fur. Sensing an opportunity, I try to cut a deal. If she promises not to have me killed — PETA is assumed to be in league with the terroristic Earth Liberation Front — I’ll send back the fur. “No promises,’’ she e-mails.
My colleagues enjoy their aerosol cheese, which I serve with Chivas Regal. I had worried that my little experiment would somehow offend them, but they seem more puzzled than anything else.
What did I learn from the week? I keep thinking of the happy hen eggs I saw that cost twice as much as regular eggs. A reminder that the American food monolith, with its chicken mills and slaughterhouses, wasn’t created because its owners are cruel. It was created because it’s cheaper to make food that way, and most people live close to the bone. Organic food is a luxury, another bit of conspicuous consumption. And while eating organic has some impact, I’m sure, it is tiny compared to the self-righteousness of its practitioners.
That said, utter indifference doesn’t quite suit me either — it couldn’t suit someone who spends as much time as I do tending to the needs of a tree frog. I found myself attracted to a friend of mine’s approach to the matter — treat ’em decently and then eat ’em guiltlessly — most of all. There is a line from the Greek poet Bion that I like very much that comes to mind: “Little boys throw stones at frogs in jest, though the frogs die, not in jest, but in earnest.” This doesn’t suggest we try to change the ways of little boys. Nor does it ignore the sacrifice that the frogs make on their behalf.
Steinberg is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times
