February 21, 2024

"Cats and dogs have an outsize carbon footprint, mostly because of their carnivorous diet."

"If the pet food industry, which mainly feeds dogs and cats, were a country, it would rank as the 60th-highest greenhouse gas emitter, equivalent to the Philippines. Rabbits, by contrast, leave a minimal pawprint. They eat small amounts of hay and otherwise discarded vegetables. Their waste can be used as fertilizer in gardens...."

From "Why you should consider bunnies as your next pet/'It’s like having a vegan cat'" (WaPo).

From the comments, from someone who said she had a rabbit as a pet:
Pros:
  • Insanely cute
  • Loveable
  • Easily Litter-box trained*
Cons:
  • Chewed every cable we had, power, speaker, didn't matter. Deterrents like putting hot sauce on them seemed to only enhance the flavor.
  • Berries everywhere. To rabbits, this seems almost unconscious - like passing gas. Our bunny always used the litter-box to pee, but would leave a trail of poo berries getting there.
IN THE COMMENTS: John Henry asks "Anyone else remember 'pets or meat'?"

I said:
Yeah, here at Meadhouse, as I was writing this [post]: 
MEADE: And if you get tired of them, you can eat them. 
ALTHOUSE: Pets or meat.
But Meade didn't get the reference, so let me make it easy for people, because this is a great and memorable segment of Michael Moore's great 1989 documentary "Roger & Me":

106 comments:

Alexander said...

Humans, Cows, Chickens, Cats, Dogs

Nothing these people like more than encouraging genocides in the name of the planet.

D.D. Driver said...

If carbon footprint is a top consideration, shouldn't you go cold blooded? Shouldn't we all be snakes and lizard people?

Dave Begley said...

Solution? Get rid of all pets.

That makes as much sense as Omaha Public Power District to achieve net zero.

Kate said...

Another hare-brained idea from the global warming Left ...

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

I had a bunny as a child. because of the shape of the poops- we named her marbles.

MadisonMan said...

There will always be people who think they know better than you how to live your own life.
With age comes the wisdom to ignore them.

Oh Yea said...

I've had dogs, cats and rabbits at different times in my life. I can confirm you can litter train a rabbit and had no problem with "berries" but the problem with power cords is real. The biggest issue is that while cute, rabbits have no personality compared to cats or dogs. They are pretty boring after a while.

JAORE said...

Why not mandate bugs as the only legal pets? f bugs fart it is too quet to notice. There is historic precedent (cricket boxes anyone?) Bugs come in an amazing array of sizes and shapes. And, when they pass on (sob), they can be ground into a tasty, tasty flour.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Like Glenn Reynolds I've come around to the position that "I don't want to hear a goddamned things about _________'s carbon footprint until the people who tell us it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis."

So when the WEF holds their DavosFest by Zoom, the gathered few eat bugs, and they all forego any use of oil or agriculture and only THEN will a give a damn about the stupid meaningless bullshit phrase, "Carbon Footprint."

We are carbon-based beings living in a carbon-dependent world, and I for one will not pretend otherwise. Fuck these people. And leave my cats and dogs out of your fantasies. They're smarter then every single person in the WEF.

donald said...

I’m in the market for a new Staffordshire Terrier cause they’re lovable and scare the shit out of losers like the author of this article.

rehajm said...

Greenhouse gasses aren’t much of problem and there are far more critical, important humanitarian issues like clean water, nutrition, housing, illegal immigration and senile world leaders. There’s also a good reason real estate agents refer to dilapidated homes as rabbit warrens…

Also: Bunnies taste good…

Old and slow said...

No. Hell no. I only wish that I could afford a larger carbon footprint. But I drive a Prius so it is hard to keep up. Though I used to burn tires and Styrofoam insulation in my backyard boiler to heat my soaking tub. That was gratifying. I had an historic smoke easement (former smelter) so my neighbors were unable to do anything about it, or at least they never tried to.

john said...

The Caerbannog species of rabbit is said to have a vicious streak a mile wide, and others have said it would take a hand grenade to put it down. As guard pets, however, these rabbits have huge potential.

Leland said...

Rabbits are like small cows. You can grow them by just feeding them the plants you don’t want to eat. When they get fat enough, you can then cull them and turn them into great protein on your dinner plate. But why stick with small rabbits when you can have cows? Both eat a lot of veggies and belch out large amounts of methane which is great fertilizer.

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/33/which-is-a-bigger-methane-source-cow-belching-or-cow-flatulence/

Now that is bullshit.

John henry said...

Can't read wapo

Do they mean "carbon" an elemental solid whose presence in the atmosphere is even closer to zero than co2?

Or do they mean co2? A molecule making up 0.04% of the atmosphere?

If they can't get this straight is it due to malevolence/propaganda/disinformation?

Or stupidity/ignorance/misinformation?

Either way it is dead wrong. But it is WaPo where truth has no home.

And when rabbits eat vegetables, they release carbon and co2
As farts while alive as methane as they decompose when dead


John Henry

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Leftists are like King Farquaad.
they will have perfection!

John henry said...

Anyone else remember "pets or meat"?

One good thing about rabbits is that when you get tired of them you can eat them.

You can eat cats and dogs too (ask Obama) but you get the cat lady Karen's in your face.

John Henry

Creola Soul said...

Just when you thought we had reached peak woke on climate. From “Paint Your Wagon’s “ Ben Rumsfeld….”Whatever the last bid is, I’ll double it!”

Gusty Winds said...

You and take away my steak. You can take away my gas powered car. You can take away my natural gas furnace.

But you are not taking away my fucking dog.

Now these psychos have REALLY gone too far.

Oligonicella said...

My daughter had a rabbit. The son of a bitch ate the spines off about a third of our Encyclopedia Britannica set. Their piss is also corrosive as all hell. Worse than a cat's.

We ate him. So there's that.

Money Manger said...

Rabbits have a rare position in the Venn Diagram intersection of Food Animals and Pet Animals. Their “berries” make terrific plant fertilizer.

Oligonicella said...

And, since this is about climate change. Here's some significantly bad news for Michael J. Coren and WaPo.

Oh, and all other believers in the models.

Static Ping said...

The Washington Post is like reading a newsletter from a comic book supervillain.

Ann Althouse said...

"Anyone else remember "pets or meat"?"

Yeah, here at Meadhouse, as I was writing this:

MEADE: And if you get tired of them, you can eat them.

ALTHOUSE: Pets or meat.

Rocco said...

D.D. Driver said...
“Shouldn't we all be snakes and lizard people?”

Just the world leaders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_conspiracy_theory

Ann Althouse said...

Meade didn't get the reference though.

Gusty Winds said...

The WaPo's Michael J Coren is a moron. One of the great things about dogs is they can sense the asshole in the room. The dog hater. And it's usually a problem with the person, not the dog.

I would put this guy on the same level as liberal transgender pushing pedophiles.

Tom T. Hall:
"Old dogs care about you even when you make mistakes
God bless little children while they're still too young to hate"
When he moved away, I found my pen and copied down that line
'Bout old dogs and children, and watermelon wine

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Chewed every cable we had, power, speaker, didn't matter. Deterrents like putting hot sauce on them seemed to only enhance the flavor.

Lagomorphs teeth continually grow during their lifetime. They chew constantly to wear them down, otherwise they grow too long and cause issues with feeding. There's no way this can be prevented. Rabbits, IMO, are not good candidates for free roaming, indoor pets.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

In support of my earlier comments, just look how the disgustingly ignorant BigMedia treat a story on lithium battery makers laying off humdreds (soon to be thousands) of employees:

The demand for electric vehicles surged in 2022, rising by 76 percent in April of that year, but by the end of 2023, the number of vehicles sold dropped to just 50 percent. Car buyers are still reluctant to trade in their gas-guzzling vehicle for an EV over the high price tag and concerns about their ability to easily charge the vehicle.

CAFE mileage is higher than ever. People have embraced hybrids enthusiastically. The early adopters all rushed out to buy Teslas as fast as Musk could make them. But we are in no way anywhere near the ability to completely switch to EV from ICE. It's not that we can't "easily" charge. The process is much slower than "gassing up" for our go-go society and the limiting factors are mostly how long the car stays charged, especially in areas where the weather is actually seasonal, and how fucking far you can go on a charge. There is a robust used car market for ICE vehicles but literally no one wants a used EV. Those are big hurdles.

But our eternally dishonest Media, even when facing "extinction level" layoffs across the industry, cannot tell the truth. Instead we get people clinging to their gas guzzlers. This is why we can't have nice things!

wendybar said...

Take away private planes, yachts, and all of the elites fun little toys and watch them have tantrums..whilst they try to make us give up our cars, pets, food, air conditioning, ect..ect. Let them EAT BUGS.

Rocco said...

John henry said...
“One good thing about rabbits is that when you get tired of them you can eat them.”

Hasenpfeffer. Which was mentioned in the old Laverne and Shirley theme song.

wendybar said...

When Venezuela crashed like America is about to....Venezuelans ate zoo animals.

Gusty Winds said...

Are liberals really sure they want to go after college educated white women's cats?

I'm assuming most cat women are liberal Democrats. We all know the type.

They'll defend their cats before they fight for a child going under the "gender affirming care" knife.

Michael said...

Every time I read an article like this or news of zealots tossing soup on a panting or stopping traffic I fire up my diesel auto and let it idle a while.

Todd said...

The up side to a pet bunny is dinner when they pass.

My culture does not practice eating dogs or cats (I understand not all cultures are the same).

Cappy said...

No coffee. No puppies. No kittens.

Posting here instead of on FB because the response would promote harm to morons.

Enigma said...

Carbon footprint? This culture always logically reduces itself to nihilism. No carnivorous pets. No air travel. No children. Produce vegetarian animals only. Wait until they eat everything so no more vegetables are around, and then for the lemmings (rabbits) to starve.

The world doesn't "need" to exist. The universe doesn't "need" to exist either.

dbp said...

This worry about carbon footprint is misplaced. Set-aside all the global warming BS. Pet food isn't made from the parts of animals that Humans, in this part of the world, like to eat. If scraps and byproducts didn't go into pet food, they would go into landfills, where they would decay and release exactly as much CO2 as they would, if consumed by pets.

Curious George said...

"MadisonMan said...
There will always be people who think they know better than you how to live your own life.
With age comes the wisdom to ignore them."

That's a mistake.

rehajm said...

ALTHOUSE: Pets or meat.

Yes I went there, too…and then I thought do snakes fart? If they don’t then the snake is the perfect pet for carbon alarmists, slithering around saving the planet by eating methane emitting bunnies.

retail lawyer said...

Rabbits are illegal as indoor pets in some jurisdictions because they chew on wires which can cause fires which results in a large carbon footprint and sometimes kills people.
So check your local rules before getting a rabbit as a pet.

gilbar said...

so, let me get this straight.. The Powers That BE; are Trying to alienate pet owners now?
So, their Plan, is to alienate ALL people, and remove ANY support they might have? Interesting.

Currently, wokeism's Only supporters are Single White Women
Single White Women own (or WILL own) cats.. Cats Plural.. LOTS of cats..

And The Powers That BE, are now against Cats?

Yancey Ward said...

Rabbit's are the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodents you ever set eyes on!

Tom T. said...

Pet food is mostly just human food that didn't make the cut for human consumption, though, isn't it? Cat food isn't farm-raised mice and moles, it's pieces of beef, chicken, and fish. Without a carnivorous pet-food industry, those bits of meat and fish would just be discarded.

rhhardin said...

As I recall, the rabbit poop is then eaten and pooped a second time, as part of the digestive process. So you need to distinguish generations.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Gusty -

The point too, leftists will take away YOUR dog.. while they keep their dogs.
Mini-Putins that they are....

fairmarketvalue said...

I'm with Meade. Pet rabbits make a tasty stew if they misbehave.

Bob Boyd said...

If you get your kid a bunny instead of a dog, there's a high likelihood your kid will grow up to be a paste-eating neverTrumper or worse. Is that what you want? Why take the chance?
Get a dog. And I'm not talking about some little, lapper, yapper POS. Get a real dog. Something that will kill and eat the neighbor's bunny rabbits if it gets half a chance.

Howard said...

Be careful, people. Lampooing globus worming is libel to cost your a ton of green in a DC court.

lonejustice said...

Rabbits can be great attack animals for home defense. Just ask Jimmy Carter.

Meade said...

Never trust that Michael Moore cat. Oops, did I say cat? I meant cunt.

Bob Boyd said...

She says: I'm a cat person.
He says: I'm a dog person.

They look at you and you say: I'm a bunny man.
Then you go home and think about cutting your wrists.

Dogma and Pony Show said...

They need to be careful about pushing this. If you tell dem women to give up their dogs and cats, they may start having children again.

Bob Boyd said...

A kid in a freezer in Alabama has a better chance for a happy life, than one who grows up with a fucking rabbit for pet.

I think it says that in the Bible.

Big Mike said...

When the elites have you freezing to death in the dark n the name of junk science, there are lots more recipes for rabbits than there are for cats or dogs.

As for me, I never eat at a Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese restaurant that is close to a veterinary clinic.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Pet food isn't made from the parts of animals that Humans, in this part of the world, like to eat. If scraps and byproducts didn't go into pet food, they would go into landfills, where they would decay and release exactly as much CO2 as they would, if consumed by pets.

Excellent point. But environazis and journ-0-listers (BIRM) never take into account how resourceful we humans have become. Well Hell, the list of shit they don't know would fill all the world's libraries (and probably does) beginning with how many hydrocarbon-based products they literally rely on literally every day. And I mean literally literally. Every damn day.

Joe Bar said...

We had rabbits for a time. They demand constant cleaning of their pens, or they will stink! Not recommended.

Bob Boyd said...

Greta Thunberg has at least 2 large dogs, Moses and Roxy.
Clearly dogs aren't a panacea, but imagine if all she'd had was a bunny.

Anyway, I doubt she'll be trading them in for rabbits any time soon.

RigelDog said...

As though the Green Pests--ie, the Thieves of Joy--will always allow you to have rabbits, you animal-exploiting endlessly needy creature you.

RigelDog said...

Bob Boyd said:
"They look at you and you say: I'm a bunny man.
Then you go home and think about cutting your wrists."

Perfection, BB!

tim in vermont said...

One does wonder why the methane footprint of vast herds of buffalo 🦬 and 🐃 and mastodon, and elephants, and wild horses and wildebeest did not seem to harm the climate, but cattle and pigs do? They always say that there are more cattle than there were buffalo, but they neglect the other megafauna, like giant ground sloths, etc.

One wonders why it got so much warmer than today a couple of hundred thousand years ago that the Maldives were submerged, without an industrial revolution, and one wonders whether, should the planet decide again to get that warm, would we be right to halt its evolution. And why didn’t the planet encounter any of these “tipping points” that we are breathlessly warned of?

One wonders how the polar bears survived just twenty thousand years ago when the tilt of the planet was such that the noonday summer sun in Alaska was directly overhead and Arctic temperatures were so warm that it’s almost certain that the Arctic Ocean was ice free at times.

There was just an article about how climate change hits blacks harder, but how many black people, as opposed to whites, prefer it cold? Maybe that’s a white preference, and maybe insisting on keeping the planet cooler is racist. I certainly can’t speak for black peoples, but my it’s only logical that a race, like Europeans, adapted to cold climates and interbred with ice age adapted Neanderthals might view the issue differently than people adapted to the tropics.

Sorry for the CrimeThink.

mikee said...

In my purgatory-like decade in Baltimore, my family lived in a rowhouse for a few years. The family that lived there before us, the owners for decades, kept pet rabbits for a long time. The pens were out back in the small, 15'x15' back yard. When my wife took up gardening she had me dig up a bit of the back yard for her grown-from-seed flowering plants. The delphiniums topped out at a bit over 8 feet tall. Never since have we had such great gardening soil. And we were so new to gardening that we thought we had something to do with the results, until a few gardens later we had enough experience to appreciate that first bit of rabbit-enriched dirt.

tim in vermont said...

The most heavily populated area of the planet is between the tropics, btw.

cfs said...

"New Scientist Offers 'More Subtle View' on ... Cannibalism"

https://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2024/02/21/new-scientist-calls-for-a-subtle-view-on-cannibalism-n2393134

An actual tweet from "New Scientist":

Is it time for a more subtle view on the ultimate taboo: cannibalism? https://t.co/wRmiU8ZSrZ

— New Scientist (@newscientist) February 19, 2024

Wilbur said...

I remember when Publix used to sell rabbit, frozen and boxed by some company. Haven't seen it for years.

I tried it once. It was not too bad, but it wasn't cheap, and not half as good as the other stuff in the meat case.

I reckon I should have stewed it.

Temujin said...

I'm sorry. The same people who want us to live in the dark and cold, eating plants grown with manure, now want us to eat our dogs or our neighbors cats, and take up bunnies? These same people who cannot even tell you to your face what a woman is, want to make the decisions for life on earth.

I'll pass. Meanwhile, please pass the beef. Good to see WaPo still cranking out the Big Thoughts.

David53 said...

@Bob

“ Get a dog. And I'm not talking about some little, lapper, yapper POS. Get a real dog. Something that will kill and eat the neighbor's bunny rabbits if it gets half a chance.”

I had a Miniature Pinscher, weighed about 10 pounds. She was a bunny killing machine, couldn’t help herself, it was in her DNA. She wouldn’t eat them though, just brought me their bodies like a retriever would bring you a duck. One of the best dogs I’ve ever owned.

Kevin said...

Next we calculate the carbon footprint of the Jews.

TaeJohnDo said...

"Get a dog. And I'm not talking about some little, lapper, yapper POS. Get a real dog. Something that will kill and eat the neighbor's bunny rabbits if it gets half a chance."

I was dating a girl who had a pet rabbit. I took my beagle over to her house one day, and while we were all in the backyard, she brought her caged pet rabbit out to sit in the sun with us. My dog was being pretty cool about it - just giving the rabbit the occasional side eye, but her nose was working overtime. The GF decides the dog is good and announces she is going to open the door and let the rabbit out. "That's not a good idea." No, she insists she can tell the dog is ignoring the rabbit. The rabbit takes some steps out of the cage and my dog lets if get two feet from the door and then BAM! My dog is on that rabbit like a fly on fresh poop. After a spirited and mostly injury free chase, we get the poor rabbit back in the cage. I tell my soon to be former GF, "I told you that wasn't a good idea."

Rocco said...

lonejustice said...
“Rabbits can be great attack animals for home defense. Just ask Jimmy Carter.”

Or Monty Python.

rcocean said...

Why does anyone care about this absurd finger-wagging from the MSM on "reducing your carbon footprint"? Rabbits aren't bad as pets, but they aren't very smart and they aren't going to protect you home or keep the mice away.

Is this "reducing your carbon footprint" a way that well-to-do people can channel their charitable influences into something that takes little effort and helps the Leftwing cause? It reminds of recycling or signing petitions to save the spotted owl. Something that makes the person feel good and costs them almost nothing, since all the reduction in economic activity due to "fighting climate change" will be borne by people in the energy industry or the poor and working class.

rehajm said...

who had a pet rabbit. I took my beagle over to her house one day

Coworkers family had a rabbit and a coon hound rescure. There was a bloody crime scene....mostly in the living room. Now they have a turtle...

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

What is carbon footprint of a million eco-zealots vs a million dogs/ cats? Just asking for a friend…

Paul said...

I have a dog... and these nutjobs can go to hell...

If our dog barks at night I get my Glock and check it out... and that makes my dog 1000x more valuable than any stupid rabbit.

If these nutjobs want to lower 'carbon footprint' they can just, you know, go live in a cardboard box in LA or NYC.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

T I V mused They always say that there are more cattle than there were buffalo, but they neglect the other megafauna, like giant ground sloths, etc.

Yeah, like dinosaurs. Either they were like lizards (who don't pee, opting to eject a crystal of something similar to ureac acid) or birds, depending on "current" science. Either way, there would be some enviro-impact of all those huge herbivores and omnivores roaming the lands.

Rocco said...

A lot of talk about eating rabbits. I think I’ll have a cheese coney for lunch.

Bob Boyd said...

I had a Miniature Pinscher, weighed about 10 pounds. She was a bunny killing machine...

Cool. I've seen those dogs, they're awesome. So quick. The one I was familiar with had a great personality. It's name was King.

Mason G said...

"If the pet food industry, which mainly feeds dogs and cats, were a country, it would rank as the 60th-highest greenhouse gas emitter, equivalent to the Philippines."

I'll see your fact and raise you a fact:

"CO2 is not a pollutant."

BTW- When you say "Cats and dogs have an outsize carbon footprint...", you're talking about "CO2" not "carbon". If you can't even get that simple thing right, what are the odds anything else you wrote is even remotely accurate? And "outsize" compared to- what? Grasshopper farts? You never say.

Big Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mind your own business said...

So how many liberals do I have to eliminate to carbon offset my 4 dogs?

Narr said...

My wife had some rabbits growing up--but only one at a time. They lived in an enclosure in the back yard that her father built. One vanished without a trace, and the other was done in by what had to be a very large and stealthy dog. Only bits remained.

Just yesterday, as she was taking a walk, she passed a couple walking their dog . . . which sprang at her as she went by and tore some skin off her hand between thumb and forefinger.
The couple were very apologetic--offered to pay for any costs--and the dog had all its shots, but she has to get a tetanus shot and go see her doctor now anyway.

Our 20 pd. dackel would go after a rabbit, for sure, and probably a nutria. Might settle for barking like a maniac at a capybara.



re Pete said...

"The cat’s in the well and the servant is at the door

The drinks are ready and the dogs are going to war"

Static Ping said...

There's also the matter that most rabbits are small enough for local predators to pick off. Dogs and cats usually require a large predator (or a motor vehicle) to take down. Rabbits can be taken down by hawks and foxes, especially if they are in a fenced in area that reduces the ability to evade and the rabbit has had its wild instincts dulled. I know someone who lost a pet rabbit to a random predator, which did not even have the decency to finish eating what it killed. Of course, this is not an issue if the rabbit never leaves the house, but some of the joy of a pet is to bring it outside.

Iman said...

The eco-lefties should pull their heads from their dank passages and free their hapless gerbils.

Rusty said...

Aw, jesus. Just fuck off.

loudogblog said...

Michael Moore's documentary, Roger and Me, is funny, but it's not "great." It's actually very disingenuous. I actually liked liked it when it came out and bought it on laserdisc, but then years later later, I found out that it was based on a lie. In the "documentary," Michael Moore keeps claiming that Roger Smith, the CEO of GM never meet with him. That's the premise that the whole movie is based on. But it turned out that Roger Smith did meet with Michael Moore twice and Moore chose not to mention that because it would have interfered with his propaganda film. (And he stills denies that to this day, but his later films contained so many lies that we can't trust anything that Michael Moore says.) Michael Moore ruined American "documentary" films by trotting out massively popular "documentary" films that were actually just political propaganda films. Now nobody trusts documentary films, especially political ones released in an election year.

"Actually, Moore did talk to Smith at two G.M. stockholders meetings and Westfall got him into both meetings. Westfall would take a group of his people to these stockholders meetings to demonstrate, confront the G.M. C.E.O. and make known the workers and communities concerns. Moore went with Westfall…twice." https://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id17.html

Big Mike said...

The Democrats will soon issue some sort of statement along the lines of “Ha, ha, silly Deplorables. No one is planning to force you to give up your dogs and cats.” Or words to that effect. Then some federal agency will propose regulations that have the effect of forcing ordinary people to give up their pets, and only with enough pushback to put Democrat politicians in fear of their jobs (or worse, if I know cat ladies) will cause the regulations to be tabled — for the time being.

See gas stoves, air conditioning, and gas furnaces.

BG said...


Bob Boyd said...
...
Get a dog. And I'm not talking about some little, lapper, yapper POS. Get a real dog. Something that will kill and eat the neighbor's bunny rabbits if it gets half a chance.


We used to have a 140 lb. half-Rottie. As long as we had him, we were never bothered by "varmints" here on the farm. (His fight with an adult raccoon was epic.) Also an excellent watch dog and put the fear in suspicious looking strangers just by sitting on the porch. (He never went off the porch after them.) His mother was an Australian Shepherd Heeler. Beautiful dog. Still miss him.

jaydub said...

When I was in grad school, our 3 year old was in a preschool in California. One day my wife went to pick her up from school, and the teacher was offering to anyone who wanted one, a doe Rex hare who only had one bunny per brood, hence was economically unsustainable for a livestock breeder. My daughter convince my wife that she and her six year old sister would take care of the rabbit if only given the chance. My wife, she being the uncompromising bleeding heart that was her want brought the dear little varmint home during finals week so I could build a cage for it at the most inopportune time. It took me a couple of weeks, but I did produce a cage. Some weeks later the rabbit was discovered convulsing on the cage floor and was promptly rushed to the vet who pronounced her fatally in the throes of a brain seizure and then put to sleep. The vet explained the cycle of life to my two daughters who didn't say a word on the ride home from the vet. We were concerned until they got home and the older one announce "I'm glad I don't have to clean that cage anymore" and the younger said "I was tired of feeding it" too. That was the go-to story of my children's early years until my oldest turned 10 and was given the "talk" by her mother. My wife was sure she had traumatised the daughter who sat silent in the back seat the station wagon heading to dinner that same night, whereupon the 10 year old broke the silence by asking "now that I'm about to become a woman can I have a bigger allowance?" That one was retold until she, herself, was 52 and served as the perfect example of how adults agonize over that which children often consider to be tivial matters. It also illustrates why my oldest became my favorite.

Saint Croix said...

The hostility to carbon dioxide is amazing to me.

The hatred of humanity (for breathing!) morphs into a hatred of the rest of God's creatures. Cows are hated, dogs are hated, cats are hated.

And this hatred is disguised by flopping the word "science" on it, as if any of this is logical or coherent.

Our planet has had five ice ages, and subsequent warming periods. You can't blame any of this on humanity. The idea that we should "fix" the climate is the worst sort of sin, combining pride and hubris with irrational stupidity.

Saint Croix said...

Meade didn't get the reference though.

I didn't either!

Pets or Meat?

Mikey NTH said...

For The Good Of The Planet

You shall not have any luxury at all. Not even a dog or cat. So Sayeth Your Betters.

(But you can be darn sure those Betters will have their dogs and cats.)

Mikey NTH said...

Years ago at the summer camp my tent area did the "Killer Rabbit" scene from Holy Grail. The kids loved doing it, we got laughs, and one of the rabbits from the Nature section got a starring role.

Ralph L said...

In the 90s, I save a wild baby bunny from the jaws of the neighbor's cat, a risky operation. The damn thing shat down the front of my white shirt in gratitude.

We have several new cats in the area and at least 2 ground hogs, so I haven't seen any bunnies in months, but that's happened before.

Narr said...


"But you can be darn sure those Betters will have their dogs and cats." And horses, don't forget horses.

In his book I Will Bear Witness, Victor Klemperer describes in some detail the growing restrictions imposed by the Nazi regime on Jews, in regard to pets.

They ended by requiring all Jews to have their dogs and cats euthanized, with proper documentation. They couldn't be given away.

But not even the Nazis pretended it was about the environment.





Oligonicella said...

David53:
I had a Miniature Pinscher, weighed about 10 pounds. She was a bunny killing machine, couldn’t help herself, it was in her DNA. She wouldn’t eat them though, just brought me their bodies like a retriever would bring you a duck.

Same with my miniDach, Sadie. She'd run them down like a guided missile then bring them in.

BUT, woe to any other dog that even attempted to sniff it as she ate her fill under the parlor table. Even my Sam at 95lb. And field rats. Oh man, literally less than a second for the kill. Brutal but merciful in a way.

Oligonicella said...

Wilbur:
I remember when Publix used to sell rabbit, frozen and boxed by some company. Haven't seen it for years. ... I reckon I should have stewed it.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving meals I cooked was rabbit. They had been eating my low hanging peaches and I'd been shooting them. I only kept the quarters and wound up with a lot of rabbit. I took eight(?) pairs of hind legs, tied them and put them like a crown of lamb in a broiling pan with a fluffy rice layer then peas all basted in butter in the middle and something or other for garnish.

Except the hinds. They were sticking up and every ten minutes or so I'd paint them with raspberry ham.

Mason G said...

"Rabbits, by contrast, leave a minimal pawprint."

So people shouldn't have dogs or cats because of their impact on the planet? Has WaPoo done an article on the outsized impact overweight people have on the planet, or can that one be expected in the future?

Oligonicella said...

Static Ping:
... but some of the joy of a pet is to bring it outside.

Or not. :)

A friend of mine way back moved to the burbs and got a new kitty because "two cats in the yard", don't ya know.

She was enjoying her new CSN&Y existence playing with her kitten in the front yard nearing dusk.

Without a sound, over her shoulder, an owl swooped, snatched the kitten and left without a stutter.

The last she saw of kitty was "mew, mew, mew".

Jupiter said...

"They'll defend their cats before they fight for a child going under the "gender affirming care" knife."

It's worse than that. A lot worse. The girls go nuts in their teens, in groups. It's a form of hysteria. But with the boys, it's usually the mother who thinks he should be a girl, before he even understands what it's about. And if the father objects, she gets rid of him. Divorces him, and sics her fellow witches in the CPS and the "family court" system on him. Makes him pay some criminal with an MD to cut his son's balls off.

Oligonicella said...

BG:
Still miss him.

You never get over a great dog. Sam's been gone for 25 now and I still think of him every week or so at least. Best pal I ever had.

solar emp said...

We currently have 4 dogs that on on a raw diet. I feed chicken thighs, tuna and pork as entrees along with eggs with shell from my chickens, frozen broccoli, hamburger meat and a spoonful of lowfat strawberry yogurt. People say that what I feed my dogs is a slap in the face to starving people around the world. All I can tell them is that my dogs are my youngins and if strangers and my dogs were starving to death, I would let the strangers die then, feed them to my dogs!!

Rusty said...

Carbon isn't a pollutant so go ahead. Get your Great Pyrenees.
Socialism is a pollutant. So you can get rid of that.

Tina Trent said...

I used to have to be at work at 2:00am. It took ten minutes to get there, and the local rock station played the same song at the same time every night: Led Zepplin's Kashmir. The driveway and fields were always full of wild rabbits, frozen in place, as they do in danger. Big as dogs, still as statues, standing erect. Dozens of them. I drove around them and they didn't move.

I'd love to eat them, but I don't know about eating wild rabbits. The eerie vibe was a dark unthreatening gift from the universe.

Nancy Reyes said...

the same as the Philippines?
As much greenhouse gas as the Philippines? LOL.

Here in the Philippines, a lot of our greenhouse gas level comes from agriculture. Rice patty emissions of methane (if you flood traditionally) or NOxide (If you do the limited flooding) and of course we use diesel using farm machinery now instead of those methane emitting waterbuffalo.
'
so no: Feeding your cat a plant based diet might not work because the same ecoweenies are trying to destroy agriculture which is a major source of greenhouse gases.

Tina Trent said...

But if they eat cows, the cows don't fart anymore, right? Sorta like buying emission credits with your credit card points.