Evening shift at the café: a mouse saunters across the dining room floor. A customer notices and complains. Most restaurants in London have mice. Trouble is when you have a militant animal rights restaurant…you can’t set traps, put down poison…you can’t kill the mice! You can’t even, in good conscience, kill cockroaches. That’s speciesism.
Veganism and anarchy go together because neither believe in hierarchy. That is the root meaning of anarchy…Ancient Greek ἀναρχία (anarchía) < ἀν- (an-, “not”), + ἀρχός (archos, “ruler, authority”). It does not mean, at least in the political sense, chaos. Vegans do not believe in a hierarchy of species, with humans at the top and insects at the bottom. They do not exploit animals for what they produce either...so they do not eat dairy but neither do they eat honey (full explanation here). Even more extreme are fruitarians, who will only eat fruit that falls naturally from the plant. There is a movement called Great ape personhood to include apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans) in the category of people.
So we spent hours placing plastic bowls with tasty morcels in strategic places, hoping that the mouse would somehow jump into the bowl which would enable us to deposit it outside. As I implied earlier, this mouse was very relaxed around us. Would stroll around. Do the mice know it’s a vegan restaurant?
Dvd, the waitress, at this suggestion, pronounced enigmatically: “Mice have nerves nearer to their brains than we do.” They talked about getting in a cat. “So it’s allright if another animal kills it, but not us?” I asked.
So we spent hours placing plastic bowls with tasty morcels in strategic places, hoping that the mouse would somehow jump into the bowl which would enable us to deposit it outside. As I implied earlier, this mouse was very relaxed around us. Would stroll around. Do the mice know it’s a vegan restaurant?
Dvd, the waitress, at this suggestion, pronounced enigmatically: “Mice have nerves nearer to their brains than we do.” They talked about getting in a cat. “So it’s allright if another animal kills it, but not us?” I asked.
Just seen, a company called Vegan Karma make these…
This is a pre-monkey, only found in the Old World. Isn’t it wierd looking? Like Golum in Lord of the Rings.
Ben Emlyn-Jones
September 3, 2008 at 11:21 pmThe Findhorn Foundation (http://www.findhorn.org/index.php) has designed a humane mousetrap that can be made cheaply at home. All you need is a mouse cage a plastic tube and a few other household bits and pieces. I saw the prototype in 2005 when I visited the community.
I wonder if our rodent friends might return the favour by breeding a species of flea that doesn't carry bubonic plague!… Only fair I'd say!
marmitelover@mac.com
September 22, 2008 at 9:24 amApparently they don't work very well, the humane traps. Or they only work if you remove all the food around which is obviously rather difficult in a restaurant.