Today mom and dad bought some crab to go with our weird-ass Chinese-meets-Middle-American Thanksgiving dinner. The crabs were kept live in a brown paper bag in the sink outside. Later my dad dismembered them and removed the parts that we weren't going to eat.
When I was a kid, mom would buy fish from the Chinese supermarket. Chinese supermarkets, for those not in the know, generally have a live seafood section where you can pick the fish you want and have the option of taking it home and killing it there. As the fish would be fresher if you cook it soon after killing, my parents would opt to buy the fish live. On the drive home I would have a fish in a bag flopping and dying next to me. Upon reaching home, I would go to my bedroom so that I wouldn't have to hear my mom whack the fish's head off. One day, my mom showed me the fish's headless body in the fridge; the nerves were still active, so the body made breathing motions as it had before death.
Yet the only reason I didn't want to eat fish was because I didn't like the taste. Now I enjoy fish. I suspect that I plain don't have any illusions about the dead animals I'm eating.
No comments:
Post a Comment