POETRY TUESDAY - DUCK

“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.” - Samuel Butler

Immediately I took a look at this week’s photo challenge by Magpie Tales, my mind turned to the hunting season. Autumn generally heralds the cooler weather, harvest, rain, mud and the ringing out of shotguns in the forests and lakes as hunters go out and bag their catches. Although I am not a vegetarian, I consume meat sparingly and tend to be squeamish about game. That hunting is made out to be a sport I find rather objectionable and the fact that many animals and birds that are killed by hunters may go to waste is something that further distresses me.

Old cultures that have a long culinary tradition, such as China and the Mediterranean lands, often have a great respect for food animals and treat them with kindness. Each part of the animal is used and nothing goes to waste. A famous Chinese proverb says that that the only part of the pig that is not eaten is its grunt! Similarly in Spain, Italy and Greece every part of the animal is used and numerous dishes that utilise offal are not only regularly made, but considered as delicacies. To waste food in these cultures is seen as sacrilegious and offensive to bountiful nature.

The older I get, the more environmentally aware I seem to become and the less meat I seem to eat. Hunting is not for me, and I deplore the “sport” of hunting where animals are killed and abandoned or otherwise brought back home to languish in some freezer for months and then get thrown out in the “clean-up” that inevitably follows.

The photo this week generated these Haiku that use the word duck in as many of its meanings as I could think of.

Duck

“Duck!” He cried, as birds
Rushed up from the lake, to soar
In lead-cloudy skies.

A shot rang out, loud,
A duck fell dead from the sky –
Hunting season starts.

Cotton duck apron
Cook’s busy dressing the bird;
Game suits cool weather.

“Out for a duck!” It’s
Just not cricket for the bird;
Better turn vegan…