Steak Trees, and the Hierarchy of Animal Cuteness

So I am feeling a bit more literary today, writing two posts in one day, but I feel like it.  I am going to break from my usual focus on theology, and just share a random thought. 

People today are particularly odd about animals.  I think this is because nearly everybody lives in cities, so people's limited encounters with animals and the outdoors has warped some very basic concepts.  When I used to work at Labatt, I remember just laughing as I listened to some of my coworkers talk about how they couldn't think about the fact that meat came from an animal.  I could just see this scenario in my mind, where this older gentleman is walking down this gorgeous, perfectly lined orchard of trees.  He steps up his ladder that stretched up toward the massive green crown, and he grabs a T-Bone hanging from the tree's branches.  He gives an approving look, telling us that the meat is ripe.  He plucks the meat off the tree, and tosses it into the back of his old 55 Chevy truck.

Being a part of family that has hunting as such a big part of it, I have been absolutely blown away by the level of hypocrisy that has become so Vogue as of late.  My first encounter came in High School, when a fellow student, upon hearing that I hunted deer, got so enraged, he threatened to kill me.  Just let that sink in for a second before I mention that he was wearing leather shoes and a leather belt.  That is the only time I have been threatened for hunting, but it is far from the last time I have been called evil by people who wear leather, have leather couches, eat hamburgers, wear products tested on animals, and more.  When I ask hard questions in return, there is no reasoning.  It just is. 

The biggest reason I have found that people will become so enraged over deer hunting, is because people have this underlying hierarchy of animals, the cuter they are, the more important their life is.  Kill a deer, and you are monster.  Kill a stupid cow, and that's just life.  Fish suffer from have no whites in their eyes.  i think if they did, they would have more sympathizers.  Birds are pretty, but still enough different from us that we are pretty cool with the billions of chickens and turkeys we have killed on our behalf each year.  Insects don't even get a thought.  I bet PETA exterminates without a thought. 

In the end, it is a frustrating thing, being someone who takes part in something so basic, so normal to life, save for the last fifty or so years.  It reminds me of how influenced we are by peer pressure.  We struggle so much with presentism (the idea of judging all other times with the assumption that the present is correct).  Oh well.  I really do not foresee a change on the subject.  It is just one of those funny little thoughts.