One day, we went out for a walk and we saw a fat goat. I was mesmerized by it. I floated the idea to her if whether we should also get a goat. She sighed and looked at me. Then she flatly said: Goats commit suicide.
I had never heard of this phenomenon so I laughed incredulously and asked her to repeat herself. Just in case I heard wrong. But I hadn’t. Apparently, goats aren’t very bright and if you tie them up with a rope around their neck and to a (let’s say) stump, sometimes they walk and walk in whatever random direction and increase the tension of the rope to its max and suffocate. Or fall off a precipice with the rope still on.
And die.
Goat suicide.
On the other hand, if whether they are aware they are being bred for meat and this is their way of entering the arena with their head held high and ending shit on their own terms, I wouldn’t know. It is a possibility. Although I doubt it.
Animals do a lot of things you’d never think they would. Dolphins, for example, sometimes rescue humans and other animals from shark attacks as a team. Apparently, mostly this is due to the fact they don’t like sharks and they just do things to thwart their plans and dinner. However, they also gang rape other dolphins and in captivity, attempt it on human women too. They also often inflate puffer fish for their neurotoxin that gets dolphins high (fatal to a human, though, so don’t try that if you get the chance). Additionally, they pass around the poor, terrified, inflated puffer fish around among themselves like a beach ball. So are they good or bad? Moral or evil? You tell me.
Anyhoo, back to me. And the goat. Ramthani was adamant that we could not keep a goat. She suggested chicken. I thought about it. My conclusion was (and still is) that it was a reasonable venture. Chicken can give you eggs and meat. There was just a tiny problem. I am terrified of chicken. Ever since paleontologists have said that as per fossil records, it is a much bigger probability that dinosaurs were feathered rather than reptilian, in fact. Because it could mean that a T-Rex could be something like a 6 feet tall chicken. Which to me is an infinitely more terrifying image than a tiny-armed, awkwardly proportioned reptile. And in case you haven't noticed, chicken aren't scared of anything. They would calmly indulge in cannibalism even as a human butchers their friend about 3 inches away from them. Nothing fazes them. And that's when they're only knee high so a huge chicken is a formidable thought. Yeesh. Stuff of nightmares, honestly.
I also know myself very well. And I know that if we have chicken, I would name all of them. And spend time with them so they know me and run to me for food and love. And you can’t eat a living breathing something with a name that loves you. So that was out.
Around the same time, one of my best friends from college Atu bought a cow in Nagaland’s Mokokchung. Her mum was the one who bought it. But it was something like a shared venture. For about one morning I was also obsessed with the fantastic idea of owning a milking cow! Ramthani did not even offer me an explanation why we should not engage but she just said no.
In the end, we got two huge grey bunnies. They peed and pooped everywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment