The Urban Pantheist

I have to release these snapshots well spaced out, so that you people aren't knocked over by the exotic glamour of my daily life.

Today I'm going back to my old work, Drumlin Farm, to take a course on Backyard Chickens! I'm pretty excited about it, it's a real step forward to changing our lives in a way that I wasn't sure was ever going to happen. We pass by a neighbor's chicken coop when we walk around the block, and they are quiet and unobtrusive, and the coop doesn't smell. (And I don't see any signs of a pest infestation, but I haven't done a close inspection. No obvious burrows or droppings along the fence line.)

The goal (in my mind) is to produce ourselves a bit more of what we consume. It's a small step, as we won't be laying the eggs ourselves, or even producing the chicken's food. But right now we exchange money and gasoline for eggs of completely unknown origin (well, presumably they come from chickens). I don't intend to directly eat the birds themselves, since they will be alive and adorned with inedible parts like feathers and big scaly legs, and full of digestive systems and other organs.

The process of going from living bird to edible meat is daunting. I was really happy to see that a local poultry farm put a slide show of the process on their website. They teach people this lost skill and the images are straight-forward and dispassionate. I think there should be many more people who are able to turn living animals into food. It's only fair to the animals that compassionate skilled folks have the ability to slaughter and process animals.

Part one: http://urbpan.livejournal.com/116289.html

Part two: http://urbpan.livejournal.com/364068.html

Long story short: I signed on to the United Animal Nations mailing list shortly after Katrina, because they offer animal rescue workshops, and I wanted to attend one near me (they've all been out of range so far). But one of the recurring emails I've been getting from them is a plea to help them make the slaughter and export of horses illegal. My feeling is that horses don't deserve more rights than cows or pigs, and that this is not a "rescue" issue. I got another email recently on the subject, and I shot back an angry reply:
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