Making the simple difficult

A few days ago, I went to a local shop to buy a wedding gift and to get some supplies, and the shop owner, a very friendly woman, began speaking with me. Soon, a man came in--a regular customer--and she began chatting with him, also. The conversation turned to Katrina and all the loss of habitat and food for wild animals. Hawks were becoming more common in residential yards, and were attacking the squirrels--that sort of thing.

The two of them said they hated to see it, but they understood that a certain amount of killing is necessary. Somehow, that led to the man and I saying that the world is also full of unnecessary killing of animals, and the woman said, "How do you mean?"

"Well, for starters, there's factory farming," I said.

This pushed a button in her, and she said something to the effect of "I have wanted to be a vegetarian for such a long time," but I don't know how."

"You just stop eating meat," I offered.

"But I really like meat."

"Then don't give it up, but change to free-range meat."

"No one over here sells it."

"They sell it at the store down the street."

"I didn't know. I'm not even that concerned about the hormones, I just feel I shouldn't be eating meat. Maybe I could be a vegetarian if I knew what to cook."

She then asked me to tell her what I had had for dinner the last several nights, and she seemed genuinely surprised that I was able to reel off a series of tasty dinners that were usually vegan (we are about 95% vegan, and I'm not sure if anyone who doesn't grow her own food is 100% vegan, but that is another topic). She seemed even more surprised that what I had eaten was pretty similar to what she had eaten, just without the meat.

The man was listening, but since he eats only raw food, he was not able to help her with menu planning. I asked her if she had ever bought a vegetarian cookbook, and she said no. I asked her to imagine everything she already eats, but without the meat; this seemed like a revelation to her.

Then she mentioned eggs, and asked me if I ate them. I told her I did, but only free-range chicken eggs, never the grocery store factory-farmed eggs. She told me she had seen free-range eggs at the supermarket, and I explained to her that the U.S. government allows companies to label their eggs "free range" if they make their battery cages a little bit bigger than the tiny ones--that the only way to get real free-range chicken eggs was to get them from people's yards or from real free-range farms.

"But how do you do that?"

"Another store down the street."

We began telling her about battery cages, and she said "No! I don't want to know."

"But it's already troubling you," I said.

She then did something really strange: She began quoting from the Bible, but not in an obnoxious way, just in a way that argued that perhaps it is okay for us to kill and eat animals. "Excuse me for getting religious on you," she said. "It's okay," I told her; "we got vegetarian on you."

The man, who lives a spare organic life, engaged her in a discussion of religious matters, and we reminded her that the store down the street sells free-range meat.

When I left, she looked confused. We had opened a subject that was troubling for her, and we had offered her so many options for making a positive change. But she had never bought a cookbook, never checked to see who sold cruetly-free items, and I figured there was no reason to believe she would make any changes. Nevertheless, it was an interesting discussion, and I walked out with a lovely wedding gift and a brand new bird seed combination.