Man Eating Tigers

(This writer doesn’t condone cruelty towards chickens, tigers or any other animal for that matter.

Humans? I’m not particular one way or the other)

I love Chickens. Not in an I-love-the-Rainforest way. More of a sautéed-in-coconut-curry kind of way. Or Fried way. Or Grilled way. Or Kebab-ed way.

And I’m not going to change. PETA may disapprove. Pamela Anderson may disapprove. She might even take her top off and beg me to stop. But I won’t budge an inch (not in the way she expects anyway).



Chicken-rights activists present a number of reasons why we shouldn’t eat chicken which include- it’s unhealthy (to humans and chickens both), it’s unethical (when did that stop anybody from doing anything) and that they have emotions and aspirations (score over most humans in that respect). Their primary claim though is that Chickens are intelligent creatures.

They quote scientific research, which says, “Chickens are able to understand that recently hidden objects still exist, a concept that small children are unable to master.” Though I couldn’t prove this. I tried performing Peek-a-Boos on some chickens at the local poultry shop. They got strangely upset, similar to when I do it to little kids.

Some chicken-rights activists even believe that a million chickens pecking at a million typewriters for a million years will eventually write the entire collection of ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ books, which they will later rename to ‘Tofu tastes-just-like-Chicken Soup for the Soul”. They (activists, not chickens) demand that they (activists and chickens) be treated the way all intelligent beings ought to be treated, which apparently includes not eating them (chickens, not activists). Now, I’m not going to raise the ‘If Chickens Are so Smart, Why Aren’t They Eating Us?’ argument. Rather I have thought of a new one.

The question that I want to pose to chicken-rights activists is, “Do you want the Chickens to go extinct?”.

Think about it. 2 billion Chickens are born every year in India. The number is only increasing. Now consider another intelligent animal. An animal actually intelligent enough to attack or to run away if someone tries to eat it. Consider the Tiger. Only 1411 left.

Why?

Because we don’t eat Tiger. If we did, we’d be rearing them in great numbers in Tiger farms, making them spend their lives in stuffy cages, injecting them with growth inducing hormones and genetically modifying them to lay protein rich eggs because, lets face it, nobody wants to eat scrambled tiger cubs for breakfast. On television, instead of M.S. Dhoni asking your help to save the Tiger, you’d have Sanjay Dutt telling you to eat more Tiger. The latter,you will agree, is the easier of the asks.

Most importantly the Tigers wouldn’t be facing extinction.

Stop eating Chickens and they go the tiger way. They would fall victims to illegal barbequing by those of us unable to control ourselves. One drumstick would fetch thousands of dollars on the kebab black market. Their numbers would dwindle. Eventually the entire species would be classified as critically endangered. Project Chicken, launched by Sonia Gandhi, would ultimately fail. We would have to join a T-shirt campaign because that works much better than actually preventing poaching. The Chicken would displace the Peacock as the national bird of India. Our cricket team would be given the moniker – ‘The Indian Chickens’. Losing to the Australians would cause the Indian Tabloids to run the headline "Chickens culled by Kangaroos" or “Fowl Play by India” when our cricketers are caught sledging. Times Now would name their one hour special feature, discussing the economic tussle between India and China, as "The Chicken or the Manchurian?” . Do we really want all this?

I thought as much. So go ahead dig into your Chicken Burger. Tomorrow try ordering a Tiger Steak. Medium Rare.

(Like the blog? Forward it to your friends. Give them a real reason to question your sanity)

P.S. The Pamela Anderson pic is important to the general feel of the article. No really, it is