by Curt Kovener
Curt Kovener
I have several good friends who are vegetarians. Some are more vocally radical about their decision to eliminate meat from their diet. Some say it is a lifestyle choice, some say we don’t need all of that meat protein when it is available in vegetables, some take a animal cruelty free stance in the decision to dine on vegetables.
I will confess that I, also, am pretty much exclusively eating vegetables but for me it was a health & inherited cardio-vascular reason. Now I will also confess that I sometimes fall off the wagon and backslide. That is unlike my Baptist friends who when they sin prefer not to confess and hope that they don’t get caught.
I am a creature of habit and routine. The folks at the local Subway know the whole wheat veggie sandwich that I like and when I walk through their door, they pretty much have it half prepared by the time I get to the counter.
And maybe my semi-vegetarianism is rubbing off…on Charley the yellow lab.
I wrote previously how he likes eating blackberries from the briars. I try to pick them and he is busy chomping away.
He has always like vegetables-except for mushrooms which I suppose technically is not a vegetable or fruit but a fungus. Whenever I eat an apple, Charley is happy to devour the core. When I shuck sweet corn, Charley eagerly awaits to gnaw away on the short stalk when the ear was attached. When I am done eating the cooked corn off the cob, Charley looks forward to getting the cob which he devours in just a few chomps.
But here lately he has developed a couple of habits that make getting the garden produce for humans more of a race.
The other day I saw a corn stalk moving briskly on a breezeless day. Charley has learned where sweet corn comes from and was helping himself to an ear right off the stalk.
And he has learned where the ripe tomatoes are growing and will stick his nose into a plant and munch away on the ripe fruit. When he is yelled at he turned to give me an innocent look but the tomato juice and seeds dripping from his lips convict him of his garden robbing.
I do not know if Charley’s decision to go veggie is a result of a health issue, lifestyle choice or enlightenment (as one of my friends claims). But I do know that it is now a bigger chore to keep the deer, raccoons and Charley out of the garden.