Why Do I Eat Pigs, and Give My Dog Her Own Cowboy Hat?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/opinion/animals-vegetarians.html

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It was when I found myself perched on our rooftop at dawn in my pajamas, coating the asphalt shingles with Mongolian Hot Oil, that I first wondered whether I had lost perspective.

The woodpeckers had forced my hand. Every morning that June, one of the creatures had landed on the roof just outside my bedroom window and begun to hammer away: Rat-a-tatta-tat-tat. One morning, as I lay there in the dim light of dawn, I thought: You’re going down, Woody.

Before this I had turned to a helpful ornithologist friend for counsel. He had assured me that the woodpecker was simply trying to establish its territory, and that once mating season was over, the racket would cease.

But days passed, and mating season continued.

That was where the House of Tsang Mongolian Fire Oil came in. My theory was that once Woody got a beakful of burning hot oil, he’d have occasion to reconsider some of his recent choices.

It was while I was on the roof in my bathrobe, painting the shingles with the hot oil, that my wife appeared in the window. “Have you taken a good look at yourself?” she asked. “Seriously?”

I hadn’t. Later, when I learned that woodpeckers don’t really have the same taste receptors that humans do, meaning that the whole Mongolian fire oil caper had been pointless from its inception, I admit it gave me pause.

But on the afternoon of that same day, I had no misgivings. There I was, thoughtfully filling up the bird feeder for the benefit of the local chickadees and finches with Special Songbird Mix. Because those birds, unlike the woodpeckers, were my friends.

The question of which animals are my friends, and which are to be dosed with chili oil, is troublesome. I spend hours pampering our flat-coated retriever, a self-involved creature who spends her days lounging around on the furniture and lapping out of the toilet bowl. But remind me again why Chloe the dog is my friend, but cows and pigs, to name two other living beings, are just fine to chop into pieces and enjoy with Sriracha sauce? Why are summer goldfinches a source of joy, but the squirrels who eat the seeds I put out for those finches my sworn enemies?

My war with the woodpeckers is nothing compared to the one I have with the squirrels. Over the years, I’ve invested in all sorts of squirrel-proof feeders, before finally arriving at Twirl-a-Squirrel, a device that electronically detects the moment a squirrel jumps on the bird feeder and then spins the feeder (and the squirrel) around at a velocity high enough, supposedly, to launch the squirrel into space.

Twirl-a-Squirrel was great fun to watch, but Maine squirrels are a hardy breed. Instead of being flung, more often than not, they just clutched on tight with an expression like: Wheee!

If you consider our relationship with the animal world long enough, it’s pretty hard to avoid becoming a vegetarian. The only reason I still eat cheeseburgers, to be honest, is out of a failure of moral imagination. Inspired by my better angels, I’ve gone vegan at various moments in my life, but I always relapse. As John Travolta noted in “Pulp Fiction,” bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good.

Of course Samuel L. Jackson, in that same iconic scene, replied, “Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’ll never know because I wouldn’t eat the filthy — ” Well, you know.

Once, a friend asked me to have dinner at her house, and I arrived at her apartment to find the place dominated by a very active cockatoo in a cage, a creature who spent a lot of the evening squawking and chirping from a perch. My friend’s love for Tweety was beautiful to observe. When I commented upon this, she simply said, “Oh, he’s family.”

Then we sat down to dinner. Which was chicken.

So what’s the moral: that life is simply unfair, and that the sooner we get our minds around this, the unhappier we can be? Cockatoos get to sing on a perch, while chickens wind up as coq au vin? I slow-roast the ribs of cows with a special rub of cumin and molasses, but the dog, on special occasions, gets to wear her own special custom-made cowboy hat, with little holes in the brim so her ears can get through?

It doesn’t sit well with me, the fundamental unfairness of life. But living with contradiction is something that humans have to learn to do. Dogs, like Chloe, do not. They have one job, which is to make us feel loved. Dogs are good at that. So are cockatoos, I guess.

The degree to which animals make us feel good about ourselves does seem like a strange metric for deciding the fate of other sentient beings, though. Some of those decisions involve life and death, not just who gets Special Songbird Mix and who gets the chili oil. Sometimes I fear that it’s all random, that in the end my friendship with Chloe the dog is just the result of vagary and caprice.

Still, “a dog’s got personality,” as Samuel L. Jackson once observed. “Personality goes a long way.”

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