Unintended Endings

   The last time I wrote about unofficial endings and our buck Chase was holding his own. Animal husbandry is an interesting thing not just because of the uniqueness of raising animals but also what goes along with it. I have written a few times about the disconnect between people and their food so I will pursue this line of thought for just a moment. You can observe people walking through the grocery store shopping for the day or the week and see that they aren't thinking about the food but just about the cost. They pick up whatever is the best deal not perhaps what is best for them or their family.It is possible they don't even know what's best or why, they need to eat so they buy what they can afford without knowing where it came from or why. If you grow any type of garden or provide your own meat there is an intimacy with your food that the mainstream populace doesn't understand, if they did perhaps our societal eating habits would change. You realize that things are hard to grow but you know what they should taste like. If you raise animals to eat you are intimately involved with their birth, their survival, their growth and most likely their death. That may sound shocking but everything we eat has died, be it animal or vegetable we grew it to eat it. The plants may affect us less but they have given their life and energy to sustain us none the less. This is perhaps no more evident than on the farm. Plants fail to thrive and we try to understand why and replant. Animals fail to thrive and we try to understand why and breed them again. Yet we are involved in the process.
     All this brings me back to our disconnect with food, many carnivores might not be so if they were involved with the process or there certainly might be a greater appreciation for the meat in the faceless package. We don't think about the process perhaps because it distresses us or maybe we haven't been caused to think that way. Death is hard and most of if not all us try to avoid the thought of it but it happens on the farm all the time. I have processed many rabbits for food since that is what we have chosen for our little farm. I am intimately involved in each piece of rabbit that is produced for food and yet as heartless as this sounds I am not without a heart. I have made a choice to process, nice word for butcher, these rabbits that I have put so much effort into keeping alive and growing but I still feel each extinction of life. I can say that I intentionally end  life that becomes a meal but I feel and somewhat regret it. I am not numb or with out feeling but I am a meat eater and this is my choice.
     I often wonder if I have gone beyond real feeling for animals but yesterday revealed that I am not. I began this blog talking about Chase our herd buck. He should have been given a numbered tattoo and bred with does. He should have produced lots of quality meat rabbit litters and he did. Then he became more than a number tattooed in an ear he became Chase, he responded to his name, he liked to be stroked across his back and neck. Chase met me every morning at the front of his hutch for food and a scratch behind his ear, he became my little friend. Chase should have produced lots of litters, championship, show worthy litters and then he should have finished his service and gone into the broiler. That didn't happen, he became Chase or Chasey boy or buddy. Chase became sick for unknown reasons and lost weight and he could no longer sire litters worthy of his stature. I nurtured him for months convinced I was attempting to keep his blood line going even though I had preserved his son Issac for future breeding. Yesterday I brought Chase to the vet looking for answers and healing and instead was confronted with possibilities of antibiotics and I don't knows. Then Chase revealed he was worse than I thought or hoped and I was confronted with a choice continue his suffering for two or three days or more or end it now. I made the hard choice and the vet brought Chase to me to hold while two fatal injections were administered. I watched as my buck closed his eyes and stop breathing; I had intended to fix him but I had brought him to an unintended ending, I brought myself to an unintended ending. I cried for awhile as my friend breathed his last and I revealed that I am human. Every life costs something, eating costs something, living costs something, but this is the life I have chosen and it costs something.