Diet for a New America 25th Anniversary Edition. John Robbins

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ inclined to talk than to eat, until by degrees I came to understand what he was saying. What he said was that he appreciated my kind intentions in giving him apples. But, he went on, to tell the real truth, it is not a fruit I am particularly fond of. I am familiar with its taste as they sometimes give me apples, usually the small unripe or bad ones that fall from the trees. However, I don’t actually dislike them. I get skim milk and am rather fond of it; then a bucket of mash, which is good enough for hunger; but what I enjoy most is a cabbage, only I don’t get one very often now. I sometimes think that if they would let me out of this muddy pen to ramble like the sheep and other beasts in the field, or on the downs, I should be able to pick up a number of morsels which would taste better than anything they give me. Apart from the subject of food, I hope you won’t mind me telling you that I’m rather fond of being scratched on the back.

       So I scratched him vigorously with my stick and made him wriggle his body and wink and blink and smile delightedly all over his face. Then I said to myself: “Now what the juice can I do more to please him?” For though under sentence of death, he had done no wrong, but was a good, honest-hearted fellow mortal, so that I felt bound to do something to make the miry remnant of his existence a little less miserable.

       I think it was the word “juice” I had used—for that was how I pronounced it to make it less like a swear-word—that gave me an inspiration. In the garden, a few yards back from the pen, there was a large clump of old eldertrees, now overloaded with ripening fruit—the biggest clusters I had ever seen. Going to the trees, I selected and cut the finest bunch I could find, as big round as my cap, and weighing over a pound. This I deposited in his trough and invited him to try it. He sniffed at it a little doubtfully, and looked at me and made a remark or two, then nibbled at the edge of the cluster, taking a few berries into his mouth, and holding them some time before he ventured to crush them. At length he did venture, then looked at me and made more remarks, “Queer fruit this! Never tasted anything like it before, but I really can’t say yet whether I like it or not.”

       Then he took another bite, then more bites, looking up at me and saying something between the bites, ’til, little by little, he had consumed the whole bunch; then, turning round, he went back to his bed with a little grunt to say that I was now at liberty to go on to the cows and horses.

       However, the following morning he hailed my approach in such a lively manner, with such a note of expectancy in his voice, that I concluded he had been thinking a great deal about elderberries, and was anxious to have another go at them. Accordingly, I cut him another bunch, which he quickly consumed, making little exclamations the while—“Thank you, thank you, very good, very good indeed!” It was a new sensation in his life, and made him very happy, and was almost as good as a day of liberty in the fields and meadows and on the open green downs.

       From that time on I visited him two or three times a day to give him huge clusters of elderberries. There were plenty for the starlings as well; the clusters on those trees would have filled a cart.

       Then one morning I heard an indignant scream from the garden, and peeping out saw my friend, the pig, bound hand and foot, being lifted by a dealer into his cart with the assistance of the farmer. ³

      It made Hudson happy to feel he could bring cheer to the last days of this sociable and sensitive animal, destined though he was for the butcher. Of course, it is not to be expected that the average person should be quite as sensitive in translating the grunts and growls as a trained naturalist. Nevertheless, I want to stress the good-naturedness of pigs because we have done them such a terrible injustice in the way we think of them, even to using their name as a vile insult.

      But why have we given such a bad name to an animal who is full of intelligence and honest-hearted zest for life; why have we so demeaned a creature capable of endearing and lasting friendships with human beings? It would perhaps be easier to understand if we did this to the crocodile, for example, who historically has been a real threat to our lives and seems to have something about him of the darkness. But the pig? The loyal, friendly, likable pig?

      Part of the answer, at least, is rather simple. The pig is guilty of having flesh that human beings find tasty.

       Man has an infinite capacity to rationalize his rapacity, especially when it comes to something he wants to eat.

      —CLEVELAND AMORY

      Since few of us have any direct experience with pigs anymore, we can think and speak of them as foul and unwholesome beasts without being disturbed by the facts of the matter. But down through the ages, people who have kept pigs have sensed their undeniable intelligence and friendliness. Only by looking the other way could human beings manage to justify what they have done in order to have bacon and ham, just as black humans were dehumanized in the minds of whites in order to justify their oppression and slavery.

       Schweitzer’s Pig

      When Albert Schweitzer was in Africa running a volunteer hospital, he had a standing offer out to the natives that if they brought him an animal that they would otherwise have killed, he’d pay them for it. In such manner did he save numerous animal lives, create an entourage of assorted critters around him, and show the natives new possibilities of interacting with the local animals. He wrote a remarkable account of meeting a pig.

       One day a Negro woman brought me a tame wild boar about two months old. “It is called Josephine, and it will follow you around like a dog,” she said. We agreed upon five francs as the price. My wife was just then away for a few days. With the help of Joseph and n’Kendju, my hospital assistants, I immediately drove some stakes into the ground and made a pen, with the wire netting rather deep in the earth. Both of my black helpers smiled.

       “A wild boar will not remain in the pen; it digs his way out from under it,” said Joseph. “Well, I should like to see this little wild boar get under this wire netting sunk deep in the earth,” I answered. “You will see,” said Joseph.

       The next morning the animal had already gotten out. I felt almost relieved about it, for I had promised my wife that I would make no new acquisition to our zoo without her consent, and I had a foreboding that a wild boar would not, perhaps, be to her liking.

       When I came up from the hospital for the midday meal, however, there was Josephine waiting for me in front of the house, and looking at me as if she wanted to say: “I will remain ever so faithful to you, but you must not repeat the trick with the pen.” And so it was.

       When my wife arrived she shrugged her shoulders. She never enjoyed Josephine’s confidence and never sought it. Josephine had a very delicate sensibility about such things. In time, when she had come to understand that she was not permitted to go up on the veranda, things became bearable. On a Saturday some weeks later, however, Josephine disappeared. In the evening the missionary met me in front of my house and shared my sorrow, since Josephine had also shown some attachment to him.

       “I feel sure she has met her end in some Negro’s pot,” he said.

       “It was inevitable.”

       With the blacks a wild boar, even when tamed, does not fall within the category of a domestic animal but remains a wild animal that belongs to him who kills it. While he was still speaking, however, Josephine appeared, behind her a Negro with a gun.

       “I was standing,” he said, “in the clearing, where the ruins of the former American missionary’s house are still to be seen, when I saw this wild boar. I was just taking aim, but it came running СКАЧАТЬ