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2003-11-06 - 4:25 p.m.
I don't want you all to think that I'm out to get the pigs. Actually, I am quite fond of them.
Its their ears that get me.
Once, while driving on a stretch of 101 between here and Los Angeles a truck full of pigs paced me for several miles. While trying to keep my eyes on the road I stole quick glances at the pigs and slightly wary ones at the truck driver. The pigs were on their way to slaughter -- their bellies to be cut into unctuous smoky strips, their rib cages to be split, rubbed and spiced and set over a low flame and their organs to be ground and stuffed into casings.
I try not to think too much about the details of slaughtering animals because it makes it hard for me to justify eating meat, which I still do. It's safer to think of meat as irregularly shaped mounds of protein wrapped in plastic rather than shoulders, legs, muscles, bones and tissues.
Anyway, like I said before, it was the ears that got me.
They had these floppy ears. Big, lily-shaped blooms that turned and twisted and flopped inquisitively, perhaps anxiously, as the truck thundered down the highway. Their ears were really the only things I could see through the corrougated metal grate of the truck which eventually passed me and drove to wherever pigs die.
I thought about the pigs and their ears all the way from Lompoc to Silicon Valley. I wished they could hear me.