Non-violence

I, like many vegans, pride myself on my non-violent lifestyle. I have never in my life been in a physical fight with anyone and have been in very few verbal fights. I try my best to approach every situation with as much patience and tolerance as I can, even when I'm dealing with someone who is not showing any patience or tolerance to me. As much as I have wanted to, many many times, I can't really imagine myself actually hurting anyone. It's just not who I am. There is one situation where I can imagine it though, and it's a bit frightening how angry I get just thinking about it.

I have seen an insanely high number of cases lately of police officers shooting dogs, frequently dogs who weren't trying to hurt anyone. In many cases the dogs were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A while back, my cousin told me about a cop threatening to shoot his dog. My cousin was at a friends house and his dog escaped and was just running up and down the street. My cousins neighbor called him to tell him that the dog had escaped, but by the time he got home someone else had called the police. There was a cop waiting at his house when he got there. My cousin called for the dog who was right up the street and he came running back, obviously having caused no real problem for anyone.

After my cousin got the dog safely back inside the cop said to him "I almost had to shoot your dog." When my cousin asked him why, he said "I saw the murder in his eyes." I have met this dog. He is a sweet, friendly, happy dog. The idea of him having "murder in his eyes" is completely absurd. My cousin replied "If you're going to shoot my dog, you better shoot me too." My sentiments exactly.

I also saw a story recently about Mike Tyson, who you may know is now vegan, which said that the first time he ever punched anyone it was a neighborhood bully who had killed one of his pigeons. Personally I'm pretty surprised that he didn't do more than punch the guy. I'm fairly certain I would have.

These may seem like weird things for me to worry about, and maybe they are, but I know how a lot of people feel about animal rights activists, especially where I live. Despite the fact that I am not in the habit of being involved in illegal activities, I never rule out the possibility of the cops randomly showing up at my house. I also never rule out the possibility of angry backwoods assholes deciding to do something to get back at the vegan girl for having the audacity to keep pigs at her house without slaughtering them.

I hope these fears are completely unfounded, but I'm not sure they are. I especially worry about Riley and Petunia. It's hard to keep an eye on them all the time because they're not in the house. I feel like they are completely exposed and it worries me, a lot.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that the one situation in which I can imagine myself actually hurting someone is if they hurt someone, human or non-human, who I care about. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I would actually kill anyone. I don't think I could ever do that. I can see myself beating them to a bloody pulp though.

Some people would probably think "You're just some vegan girl who has never been in a fight. What are you going to do?" Well, I'll tell you right now, I am fairly certain that in that situation I could take on the biggest, dumbest, camouflage-clad meat-enthusiast in the state of West Virginia and send him home with even less teeth than he had in the first place.