Fluffy, Sweet, and Good-To-Eat

One time, probably almost 15 years ago, I stopped at a liquor store in Harvard Square en route to a dinner party at a friend's house, to pick up a bottle of wine. As I stood at the counter, I noticed a little display that someone had put together on the counter itself, apparently for the diversion of the clientele. It was a children's plastic barn-yard set, complete with a fence, a cow, a horse, a pig, chicks, etc. But someone with an unusual wit - probably a Harvard student - had enhanced the menagerie with labels - paper labels glued to the animals themselves, providing the name of the product(s) associated with each animal in the butcher shop, or elsewhere in the post-barnyard marketplace. The pig had a label of "pork", the cow - "steak", etc., with the horse labeled as "glue"...

I'm reminded of this liquor store vignette by the boys' new keen association between animals - particularly their own stuffed animals - and meat. I read a story to the boys the other day involving a bloodhound, so they asked me to explain the name, and I told them that bloodhounds help hunters in the chase. So now they have designated their stuffed dogs as the meat-providers, and all other animals in their own stuffed collection as "meat".

Today Ian brought a few arms full of stuffed animals into the den, including dogs and others, and duly thanked the dogs for providing the "meat", and then encouraged me to eat the rest - a rubber duck, a big, colorful caterpillar, a plastic pig, etc. He then brought down their beloved stuffed horse and announced that the horse was not meat.

I declined the banquet...

(April 16 and 17, 2010)