Today is World Vegetarian Day, which kicks-off Vegetarian Awareness Month, and it is something very dear (deer?) to Whit Honea and his family. Please read the story of why the Honeas are vegetarians at their site Family Life on Earth. Here is a bit of what you can expect:
Everyone but the lamb knew that it would die, and sometimes at night I would sneak outside, stand by the gate, and think about setting it loose upon the road forever. But I didn’t. Instead I would feed it a handful of hay and say the things of starlight and lies. I could feel my innocence fly just a little further away, and I wondered if it was worth it.
Months flipped like a calendar, a montage of life across various seasons, shoes and bare feet, sunsets, and the laughs we had. Then it was spring, or Arizona’s version of it, and I found myself at the county fair, dressed in brand new blue jeans and the green shades of 4-H in bloom. I would tend my sheep in a row of sheep, a flock of strangers divided by wire, some named as an afterthought and others that believed that somebody loved them. Their cries carried on the cool springtime air, stretching from the barnyard stench toward the glowing carnival lights always spinning like cotton candy, sparkling like midway magic, and finally fading somewhere between hope and the Ferris wheel.
The sheep were judged, sold at auction, and gone in a moment. They wound up in trucks, placed on plates, and somewhere deep in the belly of a memory. I had money in my pocket and a few months to forget, then we did it all again.
You can follow Family Life on Earth on Twitter and Facebook. Pass the bean patty.
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