I think I am finally able to write about this without gagging. And yes, it’s about fish again. We had friends over for dinner last night, and since they are also Gil’s fishing buddies, we thought we’d serve trout. Mainly because every other time they get together, say, over a campfire, trout isn’t always on the menu.
Parallel track: Logan is still obsessed with Richard Attenborough’s Life of Mammals, especially the meat-eaters episode. He loves to see the bears pounce on the spawning salmon and tear the heads off. He’ll actually say, “Mmmm, I wish I was in the TV so I could eat some of that yummy salmon.”
Back to last night: Logan was very excited about dinner. When it was finally ready (it took almost as long to BBQ as it presumably took to catch; evidently trout are high-maintenance little buggers), he insisted on a whole trout, not cut up, and then asked permission to take it outside and eat it with his hands. NO! Jeeesus, no. I knew exactly what he would be doing on the patio--holding down one end with his paw, and tearing the other apart with his teeth. No, no, no. Hell, no.
As it was, the first thing he asked was , “Can I eat the eye?” Holy mother of God, what is he asking??? I can barely stand the fishy smell as it is, but there is NO way I would be able to kiss him goodnight knowing he’d chewed away on that poor thing’s eye. Then it was, “Well then can I eat the skin?” And then, “Hmmm yummm, I love skin!” I chose the seat that would put my back to the island where he was eating and poured myself a large glass of wine.
By the way, about fishing, but not eating the fish: to be entirely fair, the guys mostly practice catch-and-release fly fishing. This way, they get to be hunters without harming the fish or depleting the supply in the mountain streams near Mt. Shasta. But help me out here. They crimp the barbs on their hooks, I’ll give them that, but how exactly does this prevent harming the fish? Doesn’t having a piece of metal thrust though a cheek, and then being yanked out of the water and suffocated a bit while the hook is removed, count? Do they really think that it’s a fair and mutually participatory sport--that when they hook a fish, the fish says, “Okay, okay, you got me. I thought I was getting away with that, but then you flung me out of the water and I almost shit my scales. Got the hook out yet? [works his jaw back and forth] Great, thanks! Next time I’ll see you first. Put ‘er there. High fin!”
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11.04.03 at 12:55 PM |
This entry made me laugh out loud, and not my usual office snickers but big guffaws.
The idea of Logan practising his bear skills on your back porch seems very amusing indeed. My husband has a strange obsession with fishing, although his is not quite as developed as Gil and his buddies’ catch and release method - Soy usually just seems to avoid the catching part.
We used to have a very silly fishing program on Australian TV with a guy called Rex Hunt who would not only catch and release, but would kiss the fish before throwing it back. Now what is worse, the hook, or the kiss from the crazy fishing guy?
11.06.03 at 10:58 AM |
I want to meet Logan and peek inside his little head for a while…
or at least look at the world through his eyes for a couple hours!!
11.08.03 at 12:00 AM |
We get Rex Hunt here too in the UK and I don’t know which is worse - seeing him in shorts or kissing the fish… I wouldn’t worry too much about hooking the fish. Scientists can’t agree on whether fish actually feel pain and even if they do, can we really spare the time to feel sorry for a creature that eats its own? I know that we have to fight for animal rights but I can’t get too worked up about catching fish (who may or may not feel pain) when there are so many children across the world in pain and poverty. Sorry, off the soap box now. I should say that my other half is a professional fishing coach so while I don’t fish myself, I do keep up to date with the pro/anti fishing debate. Anyway, what I came to say was that I love your layout. I’ll get my coat now…
11.08.03 at 06:30 AM |
I’m totally with you on the fish thing--I didn’t have animal rights in mind--my point was strictly academic: the argument that fish don’t feel pain just seems baseless. Apply that to any other creature--it’s not to anything’s evolutionary advantage to lack pain receptors that would give sufficient feedback to keep from gettting injured or eaten, or from tending to injuries. Otherwise, animals would just keep bumping into things, letting wounds go untended, getting burned repeatedly: you know, like sleep-deprived mommies.
It’s more my philisophical objection to the idea of choosing to believe something totally counterintuitive as a matter of convenience.
It would be a frightful coincidence that a species that has been around for eons and happens to be on the receiving end of human sport would just happen to be one that has nerve receptors sharp enough to keep it from bumping into rocks or resist being grabbed, yet dull enough to keep it from being too bothered by a hook in the jaw. I’d say the same thing about insects, and their troubles definitely don’t keep me awake at night!