I'm Not Food

One of the things I'll never get used to about living on Earth is being food for other animals. Every year, I remember less and less about my former life on Mars, but one thing I can tell you for sure is that we Martians were never served up as dinner for the lesser species on our planet. I suppose it's because we were all vegetarians but that's beside the point. Eating animals is bad enough without being eaten by them in return.

I know, I'm lucky that I've never been chomped on by a lion or a tiger or a bear but that still doesn't make planet Earth the Land of Oz. Every summer I'm on the breakfast, lunch and dinner menu of every insect within a mile of me. Sure, I can use insect repellant but who has the time to swab or spray on that stuff every time you head outdoors? And forget about taking a nap on the porch on this bug-infested sphere. The last time I dozed off on the glider I woke up about three pounds lighter and all of it blood. If I want to donate blood, I'll visit the Bloodmobile, thank you.

And who wants to swim in the ocean? Besides being salt water that you don't want in your mouth or stomach or eyes, it's full of really creepy, wiggly things and great big toothy things that think you were put on this Earth to be their supper. Screw that. Hell, I'll gladly give up eating them if they'll stop nibbling on me. But you can't make a deal with them because they have no clue what you're saying to them when you haul ass for the beach with jelly fish stings all over you. They think you're just going to McDonald's to fatten yourself up a little more for them.

Lakes are OK, now that the lampreys are under control but there are still eels. And water dogs (mud puppies) in Pennsylvania streams and catfish as big as rowboats in the Mississippi. Still, I can't imagine what it's like to jump into a lake or stream in Florida just to be tackled and spun dry and then drowned by an alligator because you just look so damn tasty. And they're only a fraction of the size of crocodiles in Africa and Australia who would down your ass in one gulp for an appetizer and then have Water Buffalo for the entree. And I cringe every time I think about being swallowed whole by a python, wondering if I'd suffocate to death before I dissolved to death.

Here in Pennsylvania I only have to watch out for bears and coyotes and that's why I rarely go out in the woods or go hunting anymore. Oh, yeah, I always had a rifle or a shotgun when I went hunting but as I got older I worried about falling down or falling asleep or having a heart attack or a stroke and being alive and helpless as a pack of coyotes divvied me up for lunch

So, now I don't hunt anymore and I don't mountain bike or even walk wooded trails by myself, with or without the protection of a firearm. And I don't dose off on the chaise lounge on the patio anymore, either. I watch TV instead and drift right off after a nice meal or a little snack and I don't worry about being food for anyone or any thing. Besides, nothing could be a better sleep aid than a meal followed by a boring show on TV you use as company after you turn off the VCR or DVD player. That movie can wait.

The trick then is to not dream about being food or waking up with a crick in your neck or numb legs or chocolate drool on your shirt. Still, it's better than having to dress for the weather and a lot better than being on some carnivore's menu.

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Deeds of Destiny

Beer Dogs

Almost every American kid likes to eat a hotdog, especially in the summertime and especially at a picnic. I never got to eat a hotdog at a baseball game because there weren't any ballparks in my area when I was growing up in the last century. But this post isn't about kids eating hotdogs. It's about grownups eating hotdogs. A different kind of hotdog. The kind you eat in October.

I called them "sour dogs' because they were served with sauerkraut on top of them and lots of yellow mustard on top of that. And they were washed down with beer. Lots of beer. Sour dogs were definitely not summer picnic hotdogs or ballpark hotdogs or any kind of hotdog that a kid would want to eat, even though some kids would eat them. Without the beer, of course.

By the time I was a middle-aged man totally addicted to pizza and Mexican food, my favorite holiday was Oktoberfest, the way Americans celebrated it. The main attractions in a Pennsylvania Oktoberfest were the "beer dogs", the beer that made them taste even better and the polkas that were an integral part of most European-American traditions. In Pennsylvania, where German-Americans were more prevalent and comfortable than just about any other place in America, Oktoberfest was an autumn rite of passage.

I never liked "beer dogs" when I was a kid because I never liked sauerkraut when I was a kid. When I was a kid, sauerkraut looked, smelled and tasted like old cabbage that should have been thrown out weeks ago. But, as a grown man, I found all that nauseating stuff suddenly very appealing. That's what being a grownup is all about. Liking things that kids hate and hating things that kids like. There's nothing wrong with that. This is Earth, after all, where up has been down and wrong has been right — and vice versa — since the dawn of man. No use fighting it.

Of course, all the grownups at a Pennsylvania Oktoberfest always forget that the real reason they're celebrating is because all the crops are now in the barn or sold to the farmer's market and especially that all the hay has been baled. I was going to call this post "Hay Dogs" but I didn't want to steal the thunder from the remake of "Straw Dogs" that just hit the theaters. Thank you, but I'll stick to the original version with Dustin Hoffman and David Warner. Great acting can never be replaced by nastiness and special effects. Not now and not ever. But there I go getting off the track again.

And, oh yeah, hotdog lovers all over America had to put a couple more sad but true facts out of their minds or there would have never been any American Oktoberfests at all. This was the reality that sauerkraut was, indeed, nothing more than rotten old cabbage and hotdogs were mostly cow lips and udders and beer wasn't even fit to drink. That's why it smelled like urine and tasted like stump water. Another kid dislike that growups, and especially Appalachian men, found terribly addictive.

No, I don't drink beer anymore but I can't resist a whole pot full of "sour dogs" every October. And when they're all gone I set my sights on New Year's, when I can do it all over again, and this time with lots of pork thrown in. Let's face it, we're all stuck here on this big, blue, green and brown marble. Might as well taste as much of it as we can before they send us someplace else.