I Met a Little Mouse Today

So there was this mouse. There's another one now, too, but first there was just one. Mice are not something you want in your house, but here this mouse was, running to and fro through my kitchen as soon as things would quiet down for the night. So I bought a couple traps. I set the traps, put some expired pumpkin seed butter on them, and went to bed. When I woke up they were licked clean. 

I reset the traps, same way, and the same thing happened. Licked clean. Little bastard. So I looked up the best way to set a mouse trap. I found a video on YouTube that told me that the best bait to use was a Tootsie Roll. Candy! So sticky that it can't be licked off. I tried it that evening, set two traps with half a Tootsie Roll each, and within fifteen minutes a trap snapped. Mouse was dead. 

I felt a little bad. I had heard the snap and went in the kitchen to look. The trap was flipped over, the little mouse twitching and pissing himself. In less than thirty seconds it was over. Maybe it was shorter, but time seemed to drag on as I watched his little legs scramble to get free. Maybe he was still conscious, terrified. Maybe it was a reflexive reaction, neurons firing randomly. I hope it was just that. 

Anyway, clearly an impression was made on me. It lingered through the next day, and as I was going about my business the seed of a poem was planted in my head. So I attended to it. And here's the result, a poem, by me: I Met a Little Mouse.

I met a little mouse today,

His coat was soft and gray,

I met a little mouse today,

He asked if I could play,

I met a little mouse today,

I said, “Please go away!”

I met a little mouse today,

He settled in to stay.

I saw that little mouse today,

He nibbled on my toes,

I saw that little mouse today,

He danced across my nose,

I saw that little mouse today,

He chewed holes in my clothes!

I saw that little mouse today,

That mouse has got to go.

I killed a little mouse today,

He could not comprehend,

I killed a little mouse today,

That cheese would be his end, 

I killed a little mouse today,

His neck will never mend!

I killed a little mouse today,

And lost a little friend.

And there you are! Hopefully you like it, and if not, meh. My girlfriend saw another mouse last night. I might have to write another poem in the morning. 

Bugs: It's What's for Dinner

In its May 2015 issue, The Walrus published "Bugging You," a brief-ish profile of the Goldin Brothers of Next Millennium Farms out of Campbellford, Ontario. It wasn't the first time I had heard of them. In March I was doing some research on the state of entomophagy (the practice of eating insects) in Canada, and Next Millennium Farms is one of the big players in the country. The Goldins currently breed crickets and mealworms for human consumption, in forms ranging from protein powder, to cricket flour, to whole, roasted and seasoned insects as part of their Bug Bistro line. 

I was a little surprised at how little the author and the Goldin's discussed the ethical issues that the widespread adoption of entomophagy could theoretically answer. The discussion was limited to a single sentence on the relatively minimal ecological impact that rearing crickets has when compared to traditional livestock. In producing more edible "meat" per kilogram of feed, insects as a food source appear to be much easier on the environment than the usual fare. According to a recent study, however, crickets might not be the environmental panacea that we had previously hoped for, only performing minimally better than poultry in feed conversion ratios (FCRs). While crickets aren't entirely off the table yet (more research still has to be done), plenty of other insect species could very well prove to have low enough FCRs to make them a sustainable option. Better still, it might prove possible to raise edible insects on alternative feed sources, such as waste, or organic side-streams.

Beyond the potential ecological advantages that may come with switching to a bug-based diet, entomophagy carries with it few of the animal welfare concerns that come with eating more psychologically developed animals (pigs, cows, dogs). Without going down the rabbit hole and discussing the philosophy of pain, consciousness, and so on, I'll just say that it's likely that insects don't experience anything close to what we know as "suffering." Instinctively, I have much fewer qualms with the idea of killing a bug than I do with killing a mammal. But maybe I'm just a different kind of classist. 

The Long Road to Vegetarianism

I'm working on another long piece similar to the Uber essay, this time on the ethics of eating meat and our evolving attitudes on the subject. It's something that I often try to not think about too hard, which is maybe the same attitude that society in general takes on. If you think too hard about anything, really, you can ruin it for yourself. All the more so when the subject in question is the taking of lives of animals so in order to eat their bodies. 

In thinking about all this, I was reminded of an episode of Philosophy Bites that was released almost exactly five years ago. Philosophy Bites is a cool little podcast featuring interviews with top philosophers about their work and the big ideas that they grapple with. The episode in question featured Jeff McMahan, currently the White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, but back then he was at Rutgers. I had encountered his work before in some of my courses and found his writing quite compelling, but the essays that I had read were mostly about abortion and other bioethical issues. Now, he was being questioned about his views on Vegetarianism. 

He laid out his argument for not eating meat like this:

1. The suffering of animals is morally significant.

2. The pleasure of animals is morally significant.

3. Whatever goods we derive from eating meat are negligible compared to the harms caused to the animals from which the meat is derived.

4. We shouldn't eat meat.

A few things should be noted. First, the fact that animal suffering matters is obvious and clearly makes factory farming and the conditions that go with it morally reprehensible. Second, this is not an absolute argument against eating meat. If eating meat is necessary, really necessary, to your survival, then the balance of harms and benefits would shift and you could justify killing an animal. Likewise, if you accidentally hit a deer with your car, rather than wasting the meat you could eat it with a clear conscience.

I found McMahan's argument convincing when I first heard it. So convincing, in fact, that I became a vegan... For a week. After that, I tried to reason my way out of it. "My meat consumption doesn't make a difference," was the main mode of argument. "The meat in the grocery store is going to go to waste if I don't buy it. It'll be thrown out." Probably not true. And though I'm just one person, the collective effect of many people going meatless would be noticed, and to get people to convert you have to do it yourself. But more importantly, I also decided that the pleasure of animals probably really wasn't all that important. I started eating meat again, and I stopped worrying about it. 

Recently, I've started to become more food conscious again. I'm turned off by the idea of factory farms, and I don't buy meat products from stores likely to be supplied by them. Sad meat tastes bad. And now I'm left with that other side of the argument. How important are the good experiences that animals have? Even if the meat you eat doesn't come from an animal that led a pained existence, is it ok to kill them? Or do the future good experiences that that animal could have outweigh your right to a meat based meal? It seems chauvinistic to assume that the fleeting pleasure of eating meat can be more valuable than a few good years of life on the farm.

It seems like more and more of my friends are becoming either vegetarians or vegans. I've started to flirt with the idea again, but a part of me is still not entirely convinced. That being said, as time goes on, I can see my meat consumption very gradually falling. Maybe one day I'll get there, or perhaps there's a happy middle ground to be found, like eating weird offcuts and things that would otherwise be thrown out. I do love a good blood cake.