Homo domesticus, Dah!

Farmers are supposed to be husbands of their flocks and herds and whatever you call a pile of pigs or a barn full of turkeys and the like. Yes, something amazing happened about 10,000 or so years ago when the first chicken walked in from out of the jungle and laid herself at the feet of some hairball human. I'm sure the first couple of these events ended up with chicken-on-a-stick over the open fire. Eventually, those hunter-gatherer types hesitated a moment before chuckin' the spear, looked at one another and considered Option B. You know, the one that contains the possibility of taking that old hen into the cave, throwing some grass on a ledge and seeing if she would lay an egg in exchange for some shelter from the storm and the 72,932 predators that like chicken as well as today's generation of McNuggetheads. Wow, what a time that must have been for those Asian nomads that figured that out. Can you imagine what the neighbors thought when they came over for a tug of charred saber-toothed tiger flank and saw a chicken on that ledge peering down toward the newcomers anticipating a spear-chuck any instant. Of course we have no idea how all the domestication of wild things happened, but we have proof today that it did happen and we get the benefits today of some long eons of the taming of the shrews and other beasts that feed, nourish and entertain us today.

The domestication of wildlife for our use came with a cost though. We had to give something in return or those first chickens and sacred cows and dog-like beasts would have stayed on the fringe of our fires and waited for their tidbits after night-night time don't you think? Hey, there's no doubt that Paleolithic Man did some serious exterminating before he figured out he was going to run completely out of big things to eat. There are bone piles all over the place suggesting we really didn't have much trouble spear chuckin' things to death. Remember there was no Endangered Species Act in 9999 B.C. We certainly put the fear into some beasts though back then, didn't we? We are still having a hard time killing some wildlife that figured us out. Once we had all the cuddly little mastodons wiped out things became pretty "gamey" and I suspect my great...great...uncles got pretty hungry and decided it was time to invent the sport of hunting or counting coupe or catch and release, etc. So now we end up firing laser guided 99 - 06 bullets with explosive tips from tri-poded rifles at a zillion yards to have a meal or two of warthog or three-toed sloth.

So, anyway, when we domesticated all those critters over the last 10,000 or so years we also in a very interesting way domesticated ourselves. Maybe that's what the women wanted. Maybe they had been scheming for the previous 5,000 years about getting some real houses, some appliances and some time off from chewing leather and making pots and stuff while the "boys" were out rolling their own out of jackpine needles, getting high and sick to their stomachs and complaining about the scarcity of mastodons that used to let them poke them in the ribs 440 times before they bled to death to feed the clan until the meat was so rotten or the coyotes had to run away with the offal.

Yes, we too are domesticated now. About 10 or 20 years ago the women got sick of being domesticated and took over our jobs so we could be stay at home dads. Remember when that happened? I'm getting off track here. What I really want to say about the symbiotic relationship we have with our farm animals now is that the trend is pretty clear. The guys on the farm miss their wives who are off to town making real money. The money that goes to paying for the big tractors and front loaders and all the other contraptions it takes for one guy to handle a gazillion farm animals and be able to send the kids to Stanford or Yale or Harvard Medical School so they can make a living. They sure as hell can't stay on the farm since the farm will only support the elders and one brother (hopefully the smartest one, but usually not...remember the smartest one went to Yale or Duke to be a Doctor)

So now we are Homo domesticus and we grow food for the even more domesticuses of the big cities where most of the humans now live. And they are so domestic they can't grow anything and don't want us farmers to grow "it" either cuz we might be cruel to "it" or package "it" so there's blood showing through the cellophane and styrofoam unit in the showcase unrepresentative of any animal ever evolved from anything . Geez, this post is starting to look pretty dim, don't you think? I mean, can you feel the leash here? Who's on the other end of my leash here, anyway?

I gotta go to bed, it's late and I don't want to have bad dreams tonight. I have to get up in the morning and feed the cows while Lyn feeds the chickens and the rabbits and we plan for our vegetable garden in May, well maybe June at the rate this winter is going here in Northwestern Minnesota.

Think Greenside Up. Solar. Windpower... something wild before they put us in a pen and feed us cultured algae or some such. Whoever "they" are. Heck with it, I'm thinking Doritos here as I hit the "Publish Post" button.