What's a sea kitten? It's part of PETA's new anti-fishing campaign aimed at children. Change the language to reflect a more cuddly attitude towards fish, and you'll stop the slaughter. Or something like that. Hey, maybe we ought to call unborn babies "womb-kittens." (H/T TEH Resistance [not a blog for children]) Yeah.
Frankly, a sea kitten sounds like what one might call a young catfish.
I interned at a wildlife refuge right after college. Most of the people I worked with were very nice, but a few were PETA-nutty. One introduced me to her cat "PETA." I told her that I had a dog named "PITA." She told me that her cat's name stood for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I told her that my dog's name stood for Pain in the A... Erm. Yes.
Another refuge worker would only eat eggs if they were laid by her own personal chicken, which ran wild around the property. Fine. Then a rooster was dropped off at the refuge, and she stopped eating the eggs her chicken laid just in case...[wait for it]... they were fertile. And it was not because she was squeamish about the tiny cell cluster on the yolk, but because of a pro-animal life ideal. Seriously.
Then there was the woman who explained to me that she was a vegetarian but her pets were not, so ethically, she had to feed them meat. So it's OK to kill animals if you are going to feed them to other animals, but not if you are going to feed them to humans. Oh, and it's OK to keep animals as pets.
And then there was the rescued fox kit, who was taught to hunt by exposure to (no doubt) terrified store-bought hamsters and gerbils. Purchasing animals for food could be expensive, though, so to keep the refuge going, many food items, especially those big bags of frozen white mice, were donated by research laboratories.
I could go on...in my month-long internship I heard many anecdotes and opinions that would make great stories, though the people who actually ran the place, and most of my fellow interns, were pretty reasonable. But all this talk of sea kittens is making me hungry. And PETA, if you are out there (and you are out there, aren't you?), please know that my kids have asked for "sea kitten and chips" for dinner. Yum. Pass the malt vinegar.
ETA: Another strange version of this story.
Create Your Own Sea Kitten at peta.org!
3 comments:
There's a PETA arm in the medical community called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. One tidbit from their website was that they applauded British researchers for growing stem cells in animal-free cultures. Try to wrap your brain around that one!
It seems only fair--after all the feeding we've done of the sea kittens at a certain pond--that you should be able to make a meal out of them now and then.
Sea Kittens for dinner sounds delish! Pass that malt vinegar.
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