Navel Gazing

Last summer I killed - by hose and foot - 200+ wasps.  The body count is far worse once you figure in what the store bought wasp traps accumulated plus the wasps sucked up by the shop vacuum and the wasps colonizing the house, starved to death by the presence of said operational shop vacuum, its nozzle lodged in the gap between siding and wall.

Yesterday I killed fruit fly maggots performing their creepy wiggle on the inside of the food waste can. Apparently I've discovered my chosen method.  The hose dispatched the maggots.  

I'm still working my way through a giant bottle of fish oil pills. As recent as two months ago I ate some salmon fried rice.  We feed the cats Nutro Adult Chunky Loaf Chicken Dinner.  

Early on in 2016 I stopped consuming dairy and egg products. Cheese pizza and chocolate M & Ms were staples in the diet. Pushing the shopping cart down the frozen foods aisle, I always feel a pang when passing by the discs of delicious sodium death.

Beef was the first thing I ever cut out.  That was back in 2003 following reports of Mad Cow traces found in Washington livestock, a news story I stumbled on while -- no shit -- eating some Dick's hamburgers. Years on, and this does and does not mystify me, I salivate at the smell of lit charcoal and meat grilling away.  

Yesterday, syrup-less, I put honey on pancakes I bought only after making sure the batter contained wheat and soy, no egg. Clever and convenient, pooh-poohing one critter product while applying another.     

Issues I have with animals being used and consumed and tortured infiltrate my reading and writing. Every mention of Gabriel Allon's leather jacket makes me twitch, same as John Marshall Tanner or Lucas Davenport's dining decisions, or the social media shared eating exploits of James Lee Burke or any other author of note.  I wonder which characters of my own devising will struggle with vegan and vegetarian options and how to make it seamless and not petulant one whit within the fictional construct.  

And all this credit and debit accounting while on average 300 sentient beings perish in factory farms every second (...that kind of sentence proving I need to double-down on the seamless, even within the non-fictional).