Gratifying

Sorry for the radio silence...life is exploding at the moment.  In potentially good ways, but I don't expect to have time for another week or so to do any writing here.  I have some drafts of quite a few things waiting for the time to finalize them.

Small note:  I do find it vaguely gratifying to hear the person who continually remarks on my vegetarianism in tones of utter disdain, admit that the first time he tried to feed the birds of prey we keep here, which involves cutting open dead mice to insert owl-and-hawk vitamins, he nearly passed out and asked never to have to do it again.

I'll admit cutting open a dead mouse with dull scissors is not my favorite thing, but I'm finding I'm not particularly bothered by it either.

But then again, I'm a vegetarian because I know where, how, and to what degree of inefficiency and suffering, conventional store-bought meat comes from.  It's the specifics that I have chosen to opt out of, and not the act of killing and eating an animal in itself.  I like to think that if I wanted or needed to kill an animal for my own consumption, I would mentally be able to do it.  I don't know that for a fact, but I find it pretty likely when I think about how I like to challenge myself, and I would very much like to try.  It is the skillz and knowledge of how to do so and then what to do after its dead to make it into yumminess that I lack, as well as someone to teach me.