Sasha Distan

poor kitty. he was lucky. i feel sorry for bobcats too far from Big Cat Rescue in Tampa to get rescued and rehabilitated after healing up.

ah crap...

if it's a jigsaw, we can help!

just to keep y'all on tenterhooks. I'm so mean...

We finish practice with a mini match while the football team use the weights room, and then everyone heads for a quick shower before home. Already it’s getting darker in the evenings, and by the time I’ve spoken with the freshmen, checked in the gear and gone over the training schedule with the coach before our first friendly match next week, almost everyone has gone from the showers and its dark when I get to my car. Derrick is sitting on the hood of his shiny little Merc, chatting to the Parke

no aftershave-y/smelly stuff. i think between me and hubby we have enough to last us three whole lifetimes

maybe he'll do right by himself, go to college, find something he loves doing maybe, start a foundation, do good works, stop taking drugs and being a prat and do the growing up his parents should have allowed him to do when he was a kid. i hate what he represents, but i also feel kinda sorry for the guy, he really was designed to be the way he is. cute, 'talented' with pushy pushy parents. he never had a hope in hell at turning out balanced.

that might be one of weirdest things i've seen today

this is very very late, but happy birthday! and happy birthday Week!

AWWW!

well that's slightly scary.

thanks Suvi, i like to think so too

Tell me about it. i tend to take the bright year 11's on higher level conversations like that, anything else is just incredibly hard. thanks bud. And absolutely. Nothing is wasted, never. We do not live on a planet designed to sustain 7 billion people. therein lies the route of most major global issues.

thanks you so much mickey. i'm glad you got over your fallen-in-love-with-the-wrong-guy guy.

i, almost entirely, agree with you. except that a good shot, a really good shot and the right gun, can and do kill big game with one shot. Hell, if my husband can get a rabbit through the eye socket on a regular basis - and he's not even that experienced... our friend Charlie can shoot a deer straight through the forehead from 400 metres. instant brain death.

glad we managed to keep a non horse person interested for 23 chapters. i consider that to be a great success.there was a hint that it might be Jase at the end? ok..... thanks for the lovely review, and thank for reading. i'll give you something without horses next time.

i try not to judge (anyone, for anything), but mostly, if no one's preaching, i don't much care. i won't cook vegetarian food though, you'll have to bring your own when you come to dinner. but i'll make it up to you with pudding.

Ah, the unbiased bit is that i will tell them very plain and clear The Truth about what happens to animals when they become meat and where their meat comes from. After all, that 'meat' had a life, often a pretty poor one if it was bought in a supermarket. i find especially with the town-kids, that you need to really spell it out for them - they seem to think that meat is this magical thing that doesn't have a life before it gets on the shelf. To be personally, out of the classroom, an animal is an animal, until it is killed to feed people. then it's meat.i think i usually make the split somewhere between it's death and the gutting process.

Bee - killing an animal for fun and killing an animal for meat are totally separate things. i would argue that they are mutually exclusive. Anyone who shoots a deer to make it a trophy or kills a wolf just to pose with a carcass can go to hell and i'll happily send them there myself. Killing for fun is wrong. But killing for meat is different. There is no fun. You wait, you are patient. You only make the shot if you know, and are certain, that you will kill and not cause suffering. Afterwards you are glad of a job well done, of food moving through the natural cycle of life. we eat liver, kidneys, meat. we keep the skins to make winter booties, some of the bones are turned into jewellery by my friend. The guts and pieces we can't use are recycled by the wilderness, crows and foxes, stouts and the like. I do not kill any animal for fun. a life is a life, and a death is a death, and it should be handled as such. Respect and care are our watch words. Addy - i try and merge the boundaries between "animals" and "meat" and often i will deliberately use the words interchangeably in class. The kids need to know that meat is animals and animal becomes meat. then they can make a decision about whether or not they are happy eating them.

Urgh - the advent of Halal meat. Probably one of the cruelest things out there. it's all about knowing where your meat is from. as for fish, that is not a humane way to die, and fish feel pain (hook through the throat, ouchie) on the other hand, fishy are yummy. i have big issues buying fish, because so much is trawl caught and destroys the ocean floor and so much natural habitat.

Sly - i like your honesty, a lot of the kids said that too. i was surprised at the number who wanted to know a bit more of the ins and outs before they would make their decision, because being townie kids, they have basically no experience of life in the wild world. they all think i'm some strange sort of creature for living in the middle of nowhere.

I teach Design and Technology and Food Technology at a secondary school. One of the lessons i run for my year 8 (12 year old) students is about Ethical Meat and the welfare of the animals we consume. At the end of the lesson after several activities, videos, discussions and looks at both sides of the arguments of why people do/don't eat meat and many interesting debates on whether or not we should feel guilty for eating meat we have one final question. Would you rather kill all the meat you'll ever eat for the rest of your life, or be a vegetarian forever? and while all my students know that i do kill and butcher my own game meat on a regular basis, i liaised with our ethics teacher (vegetarian Buddist) to make sure the lesson is presented from both sides. the arguments are presented as unbiased as is possible. i don't want them to be vegetarian or to be inveterate meat eaters, i just want them to be conscious of and responsible for whichever choice they make.

Happy Birthday JC! love and happiness for you

enormous breakfast and a nap? sign me up.

oh, really liking this so far except that the animated panels take forever to load.