Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals: Episode 65 Obey Hen Mother

Episode 65 Obey Hen Mother

*TWELVE* Members of the Invercargill Vegan Society (who live in Invercargill), George Orwell's "1984", Obey Hen Mother, Vegan Cooking Class, group photo, Yellow Hen returns home, Rescued Hens, Friendship, thinking clearly and Doing The Right Thing, Neverending Story, The Song That Doesn't End, Apple, Invercargill Drinking Water, Taking hair from sheep, War and a Full Metal Jacket.

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Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals iTunes link

http://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/coexisting-with-nonhuman-animals/id334206335

An "Ah Gohan" to you all! Recording about 8 hours prior to the Apple announcement of the glorious iPhone 5, Welcome to episode 65 of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals, "Obey Hen Mother"

I've got a lot of exciting news to share.

Invercargill had another Vegan/Vegetarian cooking class, I wasn't thrilled about the "Vegetarian" aspect, to see a couple birds eggs being broken into a bowl isn't very attractive, especially when you've seen where eggs come from. And by that, I don't just mean "The Evil Factory Farming Cruel Cages" version, no, I mean even when you have some female Hen Friends who live happily in the backyard, and they painfully shoot out an egg from their bottom, where you can sometimes still see a faint trace of "mucus" or poop smeared on it. And people want to put THAT in their mouths? No thank you!

I'd managed to rustle up a contingent from the Invercargill Vegan Society, "rustle" being the correct term, there were to be BOTH INVSOC members with "Russell" in their name, a man with the first name of Russell, and Katharine Russell. Katherine was held up with a vet appointment, sadly.

It was GREAT not being the only Vegan in the class, having to get the little jokes like "any other Vegans here? Apart from Jordan? Anybody? Nobody? Its just Jordan, like always? All alone, the only Vegan in the cooking class? Yeah, I thought so".

Not this time! There were SEVEN Vegans, seven, ah ah ah! The first group meeting of the Invercargill Vegan Society, and I met Kerri and her son for the first time, bringing our membership up to TWELVE! At least 12 Vegans living here in Invercargill that I know of, and have met, I've still to meet Kerri's partner Steve. So thats Jordan, and Dan, and Natalie, and Ricky, and Rich, and Aleisha, and Sophie, and Russell, and his partner Noelle, and Katharine, and Kerri, and her son….all badge carrying members of the Invercargill Vegan Society, and a full SEVEN of us invaded the Vegan/Vegetarian cooking class, that usually has around ten students, there were around TWENTY this time, mostly Vegetarians of varying degrees, but also, not one, but SEVEN VEGANS. Good times!

I saw Aleisha and Sophie had put an INVSOC bumper sticker on their car, and together, we all walked to the nearby Otepuni Gardens to take a group photo. I asked Kerri to write on a sign "We Are Vegan!", and we've sent the image in to the "Faces of Vegan" project, showing what the planets Vegan population look like. You can find Faces of Vegan at

http://www.lisaviger.com/faces/

After Yellow Hen was also attacked by a cat, she's returned home from the vet clinic, nearly as good as new. It was a little odd ringing a taxi to take a Hen to the vet a few times, "hello, I'd like a taxi please, I'm at 123 Fake Street….thank you! Oh, and I'll be taking two Hens in a banana box to a vet, is that ok? Thank you"

I kept Black Chick, the only other survivor with Yellow Hen at the Vets, I didn't want them to be separated, to be lonely by themselves. Eventually Black Chick was reported to have pecked her sister, thats not on, and so they WERE put in separate cages….something thats not a nice feeling, to take these Hens, who were born free to live in our backyard their natural lives, to put them in a box, take a taxi to a vet clinic that sells dead Chickens in huge bags as "pet food"….for them to be kept in cages by Non Vegans…. it is upsetting.

On advice from my good friend Susan Elias, I baked a Vegan cake for the vets as a small token of thanks-iaction. My whiny Vegan sensibilities had been offended by leaflets on the clinics counter, how to train puppies for bloodsports, how to be gundogs. I wasn't sure how to broach the topic with these people who'd saved my little friends life, without deeply offending them, or getting upset myself. I took one of the leaflets home,

I knew the vet clinic I visited was part of a rural chain, and would hence be very…. shall we say…. Non Vegan.

On advice from my friend Susan, I rang an after-hours number for the closet Vet clinic I could find online, very late at night. I explained, very nervously, that a Chicken had been attacked badly, that I thought a Cat was responsible, and that she had very bad wounds on each side of her neck. When I first described the situation, the Vet repeated "a Chicken?" in a way that made me extra nervous, as if she was going to say "are you frigging kidding me? Its late at night, you're ringing me about a CHICKEN? Listen buddy, we kill a couple hundred bloody Chickens each SECOND, ok? I visited Killing Friendly Chickens this afternoon, don't waste my frigging time with a hurt Hen."

To her credit, the Vet went so far as to visit my house, to take Yellow Hen - and Black Chick - back to the vet clinic, as I had no car of my own. I was nervous about the damage, as I understood it, Yellow Hen had been attacked sometime at night before I closed the door to the Chickens sheds. They live in two proper buildings really, one has a landline telephone, a light, large windows, shelves etc, both are made from brick, they're far from tin sheds. I close the main door at night, to keep them safe, and open it In The Morning.

I was told about the after-hours fee of over a hundred dollars, I described how I thought Yellow Hen must have been attacked, left for dead, that she must have staggered up the ramp to a nesting box to die in the safest spot she could reach. I told the after-hours Vet how others had been badly attacked, presumably by cats, and had died in my arms. That I thought Yellow Hen was so very close to death. I was somewhat talked out of having the Vet stop by, the over hundred dollar fee, that she WOULD probably need antibiotics from a cat attack, how cats have filthy mouths, that she could be brought in the next morning. I thanked the Vet very much for her time, and hung up. About ten minutes later, after checking Yellow Hen several times, she wanted to be left alone in the still dark, Chickens cant see in the dark, she'd been badly injured, I think fatally injured without intervention, she'd stumbled about and up the ramp to a familiar location, a nesting box, and she was preparing to die there. She didn't want to be touched or moved, to have my torch light near her.

I left her there, and went inside our house, before deep feelings of guilt hit me. I'd spent over a hundred dollars on sending INVSOC badges around the world, to friends, as a sign that Vegans were everywhere around the world, so that each Honorary Member can take a photo of themselves with their badge, that these photos could be shared on the Invercargill Vegan Society website, "We Are INVSOC" the page will be called, to show our global friendship, solidarity and Veganism. I'd given more than the after hours fee to individual animal sanctuaries, and I was about to leave my Hen Friend to presumably die in the dark, surrounded by straw, the darkness, unable to see? In pain? Blood all over her neck, huge wounds through her neck, perhaps through her airway? My little friend who, despite being too shy to be patted, always follows me around the garden? Who likes being around me, who TRUSTS me? And I would let her die in some shed, because of being so nervous, so upset, panicked? And the only downside, apart from being upset, was a hundred lousy dollars?

The Vet drove around to my house late at night, said that the wounds were actually much worse than expected, remember, I'd been reassured about bringing her into the clinic the next morning, Yellow Hen was treated with pain killers and had the wound cleaned, she was left overnight, and further treated In The Morning.

I thought Yellow Hen was going to die in my hands, I couldn't do anything to help her myself, and she didn't like being touched, she wanted to be left alone. As I tried to get her to eat grain from my hand, to have water, chickweed, anything, to keep her strength up from losing so much blood, she wouldn't budge, she would in fact turn her back to me, to try and get away from my hand. She must have been in a lot of pain, to have wanted to be left alone, to die in the darkness.

And my friend Susan kept a clear head, I emailed her about what happened, upset, and she replied to me late at night. I rang a local Vet, they had an after-hours number.

It seemed to easy to give up hope for Yellow Hen, that so many other Chickens had been killed by cats, I'd come home after work, calling out to my Chicken Friends, and had found them lying sprawled out, dead in the backyard, or had died in my hands, and my friend Susan gave me such important advice, about the germs cats carry, how an infection would be building in her wounds, that she needed help from a Vet.

It reminds me of the Never Ending story, of feeling so helpless, that you're ok, that the neighborhood cats wont attack me, because I'm so much larger than them, I can protect myself, that they attack those smaller and weaker than themselves, who cannot run away, who cannot defend themselves, they have a long, weak neck, and a small beak, while the cats pounce on them in the dark, crush their neck, sinking two sets of teeth, two sets of claws into their feathered bodies. I'm not sure why the cat hadn't finished off Yellow Hen, perhaps I can imagine Black Chick in some way saved her sister, the way one Yellow Hen stood up to Mr Rooster as he kept charging at my foot.

The 1984 (ha) film "Never Ending Story" is one of those old, scary as hell movies supposedly made for Children. Like Return to Oz, and actually ET, the movie with the freaky looking, screaming alien who kept hiding, while yelling and screaming after being found by the young kids, it creeped me out while I was younger. Its all about people losing faith, losing their beliefs, and hence the fictional world ends, perhaps I could overstretch and say "its an analogy of how children grow from being amazed by other animals, to seeing them as commodities, as things to be used as we grow into supposed maturity".

The "Neverending" Story, which is 94 minutes long in the English version, features a large stone giant, who gave up hope after HIS "little friends" were killed:

With friends like Susan, I didn't give up, and neither did Yellow Hen, with care at the Vet Clinic, requiring two visits, a stay of about a week, and a bill of about two hundred dollars, she's doing fine now.

And thanks to some of my other friends, George and Sharon, I've now also got two Rescued Hens, from a "battery cage farm" living here, with Black Chick and Yellow Hen. I hope that they can live happy, free lives here, at the moment, I let the four Hens out from their shed each morning, placing them one by one in our safe Glasshouse for the day. They're safe from Cats inside. I'm not sure if cats would try to hurt the TWICE as large Rescued Hens, but for safety, I keep them all there while I'm away. I hope that I can take in more Rescued Hens soon, with a nice little flock again, of large Hens who've been taken away from existing in the dark, in cages, to living free in the garden of a Vegan with other Hens, they can have Never Ending Happiness:

What a ripoff, just like the song that never ends, that was to go on and on my friends,

The "Never Ending" story theme ALSO ends! I cant confirm nor deny this, but I also reckon Wonkas "everlasting" gobstoppers were also a scam too. Oh childrens pop culture, why do you insist on letting us down?

The new Hens are very nice, although their bodies tell a tale of ill treatment. They have scars, bumps, bruises and missing feathers all around, one of the two Hens has essentially NO feathers at all around her neck, having been plucked bare. Presumably due to stress, these havnt grown back while living with other Hens outside of the farm, they were outcasts among the small group of rescued Chickens, my friend Sharon said she hoped they would be calmer here.

Looking at them, their bodies are huge and angular, sort of lumpy, their feathers very thin, sparse and small. They feel like steel wool, over their paper mache bodies.

The website of the Vet Clinic I took Yellow Hen to for treatment, Black Chick to accompany her sister mentions "production animals", that the Vets specialize in making "dairy" cows quote "perform". And the profiles for individual vet nurses themselves, many of them actually enjoy KILLING other animals with guns! Example : " X will be working as a large animal vet mostly with interests in all farming enterprises, especially dairy and deer. She will also be working some of her time in the SMALL ANIMAL DEPARTMENT. Outside of work, X enjoys hunting, SHOOTING SMALL GAME, running, biking, netball and hockey"

While, shooting small animals to near death as a "game", and then patching them up for money sounds like a good business model, the idea that so many people whose job it is to CARE and HEAL other animals, also enjoy directly KILLING them….its weird!

Looking at my new Hen Friends, to see what we've done to Chickens through selective breeding, that we see them as "production animals", "oh, you're a production animal, we can do as we wish to you, you're here to make ME money" "IT puts the lotion on ITS skin or else IT gets the hose again"

These clips come from a recent Intelligence Squared US, NPR debate, about the current American War against Human Rights, which I've linked to in this episodes shownotes, " Time to end the war on Terror" :

<1 detained for years….end it right after that>

Whats that you say? A police officer ran over your wife, then shot your daughter, then stole your sons tofu burger? Hey, we're at WAR you know, anything goes! REAL "patriots" sit down and shuddup about our atrocities.

The legal construct? A few paragraphs…oh who am I kidding…a few REAMS of paper defining an atrocity can make it legally ok?

<2 osama killed happy stop right there>

I'm not, I wish he could have been brought to justice with a trial, so that more information could be gathered from him. At worst, he wouldn't say anything of use preventing future violence, ok, so The Big Bad Enemies still out there would see the Americans treated their Latest Mortal Enemy (another one of those guys they supplied with training, weapons and millions in cash a couple decades back) with basic human dignity. Wouldn't that lead them to believe, "gee, maybe those guys are not OUR mortal enemy……..maybe we could be nice to them too…."

Um….so it was technically legal at the time, which makes it ok? And as long as we keep believing in the emperors lovely new robes, that makes them true too?

And on tortu…sorry….I was acting like a whiny Vegan liberal there, and on "Enhanced Interrogation Methods" :

<3 don't take tools away>

"If you believe in basic human rights, you make us all less safe, and you're a commie, and you're no better than Bin Laden himself, and you probably wish you could have gay married the guy, you awful liberal you"

Currently the Rescued Hens have several very un- Chicken like habits, such as sleeping curled up, in the nesting boxes, rather than sleeping standing upright, as high up as they can get, you know, like birds? No doubt from living in cages, they've gotten used to crouching where they could, crammed wing to wing with other Hens. I often check that they are all ok at night, it was quite shocking for me to see the two rescued Hens sleeping side by side, they looked like two brown cats together!

Of course I'll be happier if they relearn natural behavior, sleep standing up beside Black Chick and Yellow Hen, if their feathers come back. I'll like them no matter what they look like, or how oddly, for Chickens, they sleep.

I'm not going to try and "correct" their perceived errors:

Like all good little Apple Customers, I recently bought the audiobook version of a Steve Jobs biography I own in hardcover, "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs", from way back in the year 2000 or so. Hell, it was proclaiming him the greatest American ever to have lived BEFORE the iPod, iPhone or iPad! Imagine the praise now, greatest carbon based life form yet discovered!

Many mentions of snobby, elitist Vegetarians and Vegans:

Of course, Steve Jobs cant be Vegan, for one thing, Apple sells cases made from dead skin, if Lord Jobs were Vegan, he wouldn't put up with that kind of nonsense.

Gee, here in New Zealand, Weta hands out a shiny dollar coin or two, that usually ends any insurrections, "waaa! We don't want to ACTUALLY be transformed into orcs Pete! I've got a family to look after, its gonna be awfully hard selling real estate as an Uruk Hai….wait….whats that….a dollar? TWO dollars! Where can I sign up!"

I've had some more half baked ideas for future Invercargill Vegan Society recruitment materials.

Some people have David Attenborough narrate their dreams "thee….rare chinese leprechaun, sino guinness goldaman….", once my mysterious English guy who dreamed of being a Voice Over actor was Doctor Roger Yates. I was fast asleep when the whole INVSOC idea sprang into my mind, I bolted upright in bed, tore off a sheet of paper and frantically scribbled in the dark, the V logo, INVSOC, INvercargill Vegan SOCiety, everything. I'd heard an echoing Dr Yates going on about "English Sociologists" and then "Inglish Socialism" and IN*V*SOC popped into mind.

My lawyers inform me I don't have to give that guy a single penny of my future careerist hoardings though, dream appearances are uncredited, thank Jobs!

These two ideas were fully mine, although if you don't like them, they were TOTALLY dreamt up by that no good Yates guy, ok?

The first one would be some stickers, using an image of Ms Hen, I often think of her as Mother Hen now. The stickers would be made and left on advertising posters around the city centre, nowhere permanent or hard to remove. They'd reference the Obey Giant art, and 1984's Big Brother.

At the top of my draft design, theres the word, well, command would be more accurate, "OBEY", a photo of Ms Hen in the middle, and below "Hen Mother". Obey Hen Mother, as a parody of Big Brother. At the very bottom would be the INVSOC website address, leaving the image cryptic, imposing and hopefully fun. I've tried a couple versions, one with leaving the image of Ms Hen black and white, having used some filters to make the contrast stand out more, another with a bright dark blue. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen". The blue vivid has an electric energy to it, makes Ms Hen, aka "Hen Mother" look more mysterious and commanding, as well as looking more up market than just black and white colored stickers.

Perhaps future revisions could have the tagline "Listen to your mother", and maybe something like "eat your vegetables", although the Vegan Police would throw me in Guacamole Bay for that one, "you've made the eBook reader mistake of focusing on the DIETARY component to Veganism…."

Like I said, if you don't like the draft image you can find on my blog, www.coexistingwithnonhumananimals.co.nz , blame Roger. If you like it, it was all my idea.

The other idea would be a short video clip, requiring animation. I'll have to wait until the American economy is even WORSE than its current sorry state, so that Industrial Light and Magic or Pixar are desperate for a twelve member Vegan society at the bottom of the worlds submission.

My idea would use a recent song, "I'm a Machine", by Dance music artist David Guetta

The video would focus on how we see other animals as mere "things", that in particular, we kill 49 Billion Chickens each year, among the more than 56 Billion other animals killed for our beliefs annually.

"Factory" farming, "Battery cages", we see Chickens as machines.

The video would show different images of how Chickens are exploited in "farm" conditions, as property, in cages, picked up, put here and there, everywhere, kept barely alive for her eggs, and eventually driven to the slaughterhouse. I don't think I could easily, and quickly explain what we do to baby Roosters. I'd prefer not having graphic, IE realistic resources for the Invercargill Vegan Society, to not focus on shock and horror, blood and guts. Perhaps it could be shown Simpsons Style, where the animals go in whole into the mysterious factory alive, all kinds of grinding noises, screams, stabbing knife sound effects, squirts of blood….and out the other end a truck is loaded with plastic wrapped packets.

They'd be a breakdown during the video, with an unseen narrator, possibly Dr Roger Yates if he can be easily bought off with a gold New Zealand dollar or two, and shows aptitude for reading from a sappy script, before the video would end with….pretty obvious really….the animated Chickens performing Michael Jacksons "Thriller" dance routine. Led by an illustration of Mr Rooster, the Hens would seemingly dance to the music, with their upright posture and wings easily able to perform the motions. The ad would fade out to text for the Invercargill Vegan Society, with a link to our website, as the song lyric "show you where to go" also fades out.

Sort of like this :

Again, if you don't like it, blame Roger! If you DO somehow like the Thriller performing animated Chickens idea, it was all my idea.

Heres two local news stories, those polluting farmers are at it again!

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent keeping Invercargill water from smelling and tasting putrid during the past two decades, but the problem appears to be getting worse, according to the city water services manager.

Invercargill City Council water services manager Alister Murray said the city had regular problems with a bad smell and taste in its drinking water during summer months since 1995. Between $15,000 and $25,000 was spent each year addressing those problems but it appeared to be getting worse, he said.

Southland water issues were highlighted this week in a report from Auditor-General Lyn Provost, which criticised Environment Southland for its management of water quality risks.

Bad odour and taste in Invercargill drinking water first became an issue in 1976 and was sporadic until the early 90s, but since 1995 the problem had occurred every year except one, Mr Murray said.

Increases in nitrate levels in Southland rivers was believed to be one of the causes, he said.

The city's water was taken from Oreti River at Branxholme, but when the river was running low it warmed up and caused the algal and soil bacteria to give off the compounds that caused the smell and odour, he said.

However, since nitrates flowing down the river were increasing from intensified farm run-off it may have prompted the algae to grow and cause the increased problem, he said. "Anecdotally, I think we can probably say the surface water run-off from farmland will promote algal producing compounds in the waterways and that is associated with the taste and odour.

"Whether we can attribute that to changing farm practices, there is anecdotal evidence but we don't have hard evidence – we would rather not have the problem, but we don't have control over our waterways," he said.

Mr Murray said the algal compounds in the drinking water did not pose a risk to health, but was unpleasant and people did not like to put up with it. People's tolerance to the problem had diminished in latter years compared with three decades ago and that was a major reason for the cost, he said"

we must be spoilt now, demanding our drinking water HAS to be clean!

Two clips from the Wellington based radio show "Animal Rights and Wrongs", to "lamb" means the time when the mother sheep have had their pregnancies timed to give birth, January is New Zealands Summer, our warm weather, we traditionally celebrate Happy December 25th Day (all godless socialists are atheists of course) on the beach, with a tofu BBQ and a few cold beers, while watching Home Alone and other fictional movies, ha, as if it could snow around Happy December 25th Day!

And about snow being "insulating", yeah, thats why we all live in snow houses here in New Zealand.

Wait, you're trying to tell me that this wonderful, "natural fibre", taken at force from gentle herbivores, by throwing them on their back on wooden shed floors, some guy in a singlet taking to them with giant electric shears, before throwing them down and out the shed for the NEXT victim, that natures greatest miracle, "wool" isn't so great when wet? Gee, if only there was some synthetic replacement, that held up under all weather conditions, and was cheaper, and lighter, and didn't smell, and was ethical…..you know, like goretex or another man made marvel of engineering. Oh, but that would be horrible, and all "synthetic" and all, right?

Another story :

"NZ Merino Company chief executive John Brakenridge said demand from customers meant they were running out of wool.

"This is another mechanism for being able to generate more wool by taking an animal through for an older age," Brakenridge said. "There's more wool, there's more meat because they're a bigger animal and there is a better story associated with it and therefore you can get more money."

As a rough guide the joint venture, Alpine Origin Merino, was aiming to take the combined value of merino wool and meat from about $150 million a year to a potential $230 million during the next five years.

There were about three million merino sheep in the national flock and about 800,000 were sent to slaughter each year, of which the joint venture was aiming for 500,000 annually during probably the next three to five years.

I take that to mean the sheep are going to be kept alive longer, so more hair can be taken from them, and that once we kill them, then they have a whole marvelous story made up, a PR image, "lovely Merino flesh, all the way from beautiful New Zealand, home of those movies about hairy midgets stealing New Zealand gold coins from a sleeping Dragon…."

To quote the article again

"there is a better story associated with it and therefore you can get more money."

Just like Welfare reforms really, with the American supermarket chain "Whole Foods" having all kinds of crazy "Animal Welfare Rating Systems", with little stars showing how kind and humane and generous and good looking and sexy the customer is, based on how much she's going to pay for shrink wrapped corpse. Theres bonus points for the animal being killed on the same farm they've grown up on, because, we're eagerly informed, theres less STRESS for the animal, you know, the animal we're about to kill? And we don't want to be CRUEL by making them stressed, you know, before we kill them for our pleasure and profit? Yeah, because making someone STRESSED before you kill them, that would be terrible and mean and really really nasty!

The last episode was about Iron Brion, the New Zealand "Beef and Lamb" PR being shoveled into our primary schools, "hey kids, if you want to be strong, you have to eat dead animals! But not just ANY old dead animals, killed and sent to you wrapped in plastic packets from any old country, but my sponsors product, New Zealand Cattle and Sheep! yaaaa!"

Well, maybe the Invercargill Vegan Society isn't being proactive enough in brainwashing the nations youth. As always, we can plan our future from George Orwell's classic :

<1 ideal INVSOC member (ends abruptly, clip that off)>

Sounds like the ideal Invercargill Vegan Society, INVSOC member, although change all that violence to Non Violent Vegan education, dreaming of nothing but ways to design "Obey Hen Mother" stickers and the like.

We have to indoctrinate the children, please, wont somebody brainwash the children!

<2 children attack>

If I lived in America, I'd constantly be "see something, say something" -ing the government, phoning in reports of "Goldstein" here there and everywhere, I love that clip of the little boy supposedly bellowing out "Goldstein!", as if his arch nemesis has somehow eluded him, or more accurately, his mother took him home.

We really have to win the children over, they ARE our future you know!

<3 children horrible>

And who better a mascot for the childrens to relate to, than Hen Mother? Children'll go wild for a cute, lovable, broody, yet broodING, distant, totalitarian matron, who rules with an iron beak. I'm sure they too will learn to honor her image on posters:

<4 ear trumpets>

An earlier clip mentioned the public hangings, that the children are so fond of attending. Theres plenty of violence shown in the world of 1984, especially in movies:

And of course, the hope lies with the proles, which I take to meet creative, nonviolent grassroots Vegan activism.

Of course, in the REAL world of 2011, nobody would REALLY get so excited to laugh at others being killed or left to die, to be executed in public, right?

Oh yeah, but thats in a country like Australia-istan or something, it could never happen in a developed country elsewhere, right?

Hey Jordan, now cmon now, thats a clip from the 1987 classic

, its not REAL! Its not like there could be actual footage from that countries attack helicopters effortlessly blowing away innocent civilians, just going about their daily business in their own country….right? Right? Right.

This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this is for fun!

No, theres simply NO way REAL people, and from "The Real America" could get excited about watching other people be killed…..Right….wing?

"Yeah, yeah, let our neighbors die! We'll get their stuff! Yeah! Serves 'em right for making our God angry!"

We could NEVER be living in the world of "1984", living in a blind panic caused by the government, with everyone feeling as though they have to contribute to the war effort, support our troops, and not complain as their standard of living, their rights both decline into Near Australia status:

From the 25th of September edition of "60 Minutes"

Can you imagine that? Well, if you live in New York city, you don't have to IMAGINE…."oh, yeah sorry, I missed the plane because of all the shoe taking off rituals, the naked body scanners, the body cavity probe….and then when I managed to find an example of this nations public transportation, the corrupt police stopped all the trains, went round glaring at every passenger, and that took ANOTHER hour…."

Good times ahead! A Chicken Friend for everyone to pat!

I think its easy to link Veganism to Nonviolence, the harming of human animals, the harming of nonhuman animals, the teachings of some wacky, blue haired mascot, a 2 metre tall 8 year old, did I mention he has blue hair? And has the common New Zealand name of " Iron Brion"? To link that character in our schools, telling kids we have to buy the magical plastic wrapped packets produced by his corporate overlords, to that of a guerilla grass roots campaign asking us to sign away all our loyalties to an image of Hen Mother, who advocates respect for animals.

We cant fix a violent situation with MORE violence, gee, a young mans been shouted at all his life, made fun of in front of his peers, after being drafted into the nations latest pointless war in a faraway land, a culture he doesn't understand. You find him hypnotically locking and loading his rifle, while sitting on a toilet late at night….while he mutters away in the dark about how beautiful and perfect the gun is….sounds like a REAL good time to scream and yell at him, right? now THAT makes sense, why don't you insult him a little, while moving towards him?

Or, you know, you could try and talk him down from the situation, by talking about Chicken Friends and Luck Dragons and funny little stories about totalitarian worlds, where everyone is being watched by surveillance cameras and armed police , you know, fiction? Ha ha! ha…….ha?

Well, if there has to be a New World Order, why not one based on peace, and respect for everyone? And where better to start than Invercargill, New Zealand, the bottom of the world, now home to a 12 Member Vegan Society.

Thank you for listening to Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals at coexisting with nonhuman animals . co .nz

If you want to contact me, I'd really love to hear from YOU, please send me an email to info@invsoc.org.nz

I'm also on Facebook and Twitter, Jordan Wyatt, W Y A T T

Thank you for listening. And remember, Obey Hen Mother!