My Seussical Life for 2005 May 2

Shawn, my brother-in-law, not only farms, but he also raises cattle. We had a family dinner out at Shawn and Patty's farm on Saturday. Atticus enjoyed it, but Samuel was in heaven. We saw cows, bulls, and calves, including one that was barely newborn (mama cow was still licking off all the "stuff" from being in the "womb." There was a premature calf, about a day old, that was in a warming box in the barn. We watched that little guy take a bottle. That was a thrill, but no match for each of their short turns sitting on a cow that was in a pen. Then we watched Shawn AI two cows. The bull-donor lives somewhere in Brazil.

We had tacos for supper, made from the ground steak of one of Shawn and Patty's own cows. One of the conveniences of modern living is that one doesn't usually consider the source for what is on the dinner table when food comes from the grocery store. Eating the meat from a cow just like the ones I'd just been watching was a queer experience. I felt a mixture of reverence and discomfort eating that beef. It was top quality meat, but somehow that quality was hard to enjoy. Don't think I'm a total saint, though. There is compassion for living beings on one hand, and then there is the recent memory of stinking manure and the mess Shawn had to clean off the to-be-mother cows in order to artificially inseminate them. I have to say that the latter was more disturbing than the former in my case.

I also gave a second thought to the title of the Spielberg movie AI, which I'd previously only thought of as referring to artificial intelligence. Now I think the title is purposefully ambiguous. Does anyone else follow me there?