A few random thoughts:

I have started growing some of the seedlings that will be this year’s garden. Every year, as I watch the beans and cucumbers grow, I am filled with renewed wonderment.

My biology degree is helpful for understanding the scientific mechanism by which plants grow — photo cycles, cell division. I can proceed mentally through the few steps of the citric acid cycle that I remember, but all that knowledge doesn’t explain the awe and respect I feel for those little plants as they shoot their tendrils toward the nutritious sunlight outside the window. Just like other organisms, they have an overwhelming desire to live.

Why do vegetarians eat these organisms that are the least able to defend themselves? A cow can always make a last ditch bolt for the slaughterhouse gate before the pick-axe is buried in her skull, but plants don’t even have a sporting chance. The vegetarian is the enemy of photosynthesizers everywhere.

Truthfully, I don’t eat a lot of meat myself — except for chicken. Chickens are definitely the foulest (no pun intended), most disgusting animals on the earth.

Perhaps my hatred stems from a genetic trace memory from 74 million years ago when almost all of my marsupial-like opossum ancestors were mercilessly slaughtered by a species of bipedal bird-like dinosaurs. Now the tables are turned, and I have no scruples when it comes to exploiting poultry.

And then there are horses. I don’t trust them at all. I don’t like to be near any animal, herbivore or not, that could stomp me into the ground with ease. I certainly don’t want to kill them, just in case they ever get wise to their lives of enslavement to another species and revolt. Maybe they will hesitate to crush my bones into protein meal because I sympathize with their cause.

But speaking of revolution, what about all this cult stuff? I am hesitant to make fun of delusional religious nut bars, generally. What if there really is a space ship behind comet Hale-Bopp? I don’t want to be abducted, castrated and implanted with cybernetic biomolecules which will slowly transform me into a fanatical alien warlord bent on complete domination of the earth.

On the up side, though, I could be the avenging benefactor for all my leafy pals in the plant kingdom.