My buddy Maynard…
So why did I become a vegetarian? Was my mother named Moonbeam or did I go visit a slaughterhouse? All viable reasons of course, but no-I actually had no intention of going vegetarian…it all began in the parking lot at work about three years ago…
Work was an office in a big business park. The buildings were surrounded by trees and a wall with houses on the other side. We had stray cats and one stray chicken and one stray rooster that lived in all that greenery between the two. One day, just as I had gotten into my car and closed the door to go home, the rooster landed on my hood and just stared at me! He was a little tiny thing, with beautiful colors. I think I just stared at him with my mouth open as my brain tried to comprehend…but yes! There he was! A rooster! Sitting on the hood of my car! He finally fluffed himself up and got all comfortable and sat down…right there. So I’m all excited hoping he doesn’t fly away before I get a picture-grab my handy dandy cell phone and voila! I have proof! He still hasn’t moved… so now I’m thinking-okay-how long is he going to sit there? I finally opened the door and he got up all annoyed and flew away. The next morning when I drove up, I could see both the hen and the rooster under the trees looking in my direction. I got my sandwich out of my lunch bag and threw some bread crumbs over by them and as soon as I moved away they came over to peck away. At lunch I went and sat on the curb and kept throwing food towards them. This went on for about a month-every day they would come a little closer until finally they were both eating out of my hand and literally running up to the car when I got to work! These two birds actually recognized my car and would come running-totally wild! I finally went to the feed store and bought chicken feed. I wanted to bring them home so badly, but I rented and I would have gotten evicted in no time at all-plus they seemed really happy! They sat in the trees-I didn’t know chickens could even fly let alone sit in a tree like a song bird-and the rooster would cock-a-doodle-do all day long! My coworker would take a break with a cigarette and I would go feed the chickens 
I finally named the rooster Maynard, because I kept saying "good stuff Maynard!" when he would eat-so I figured might as well call him Maynard! The hen stopped showing up one day and it was just Maynard.
One day, I came back from the fast food place where I ate most of my meals and gained all that lovely weight, with a chicken sandwich. I started to take a bite…and almost threw up! I kept seeing Maynard…and couldn’t do it! So I started doing some research, I figured that I might actually lose weight as a vegetarian and I didn’t want to get sick doing it. Now, I was always getting sick-I have asthma and I have always gotten bronchitis and sinus infections, which would take tons of antibiotics to clear up-usually two different kinds. I had heard about the new resistant strains of bacteria that had developed over time and apparent overuse of antibiotics by people when they needed them, but what I learned was that big factory farms used the same antibiotics on the animals that we humans use! There is a video on the Sierra Club website that explains this better than I can, but basically it is cheaper for big factory farms like Tyson etc. to cram as many chickens as possible in one place and to keep them alive by pumping them full of antibiotics. Without them, they would not survive because of the overcrowded conditions. I never knew this and I HATED the thought that here I was ingesting antibiotics that I didn’t want and that the chicken that I had been eating was so diseased that only drugs could keep it alive-and I was putting that into my body? Yuck!
So during all this, my hubby is getting nervous (he wasn’t my hubby at the time yet LOL) and he wanted me to make sure that I didn’t expect HIM to become a vegetarian. NO! Not at all, but what I DID want was to find chicken and beef from places other than factory farms, preferably local farms that had healthy animals. I’m no scientist but I’m sure that eating meat from a healthy animal would be better for me than eating meat from a sick one! So we found places like Wild Oats and Mother’s market and we found local farms that grew organic veggies and stuff.
End result? I didn’t lose any weight-why? Because of chocolate, chips, soda, chocolate, candy, pizza, popcorn, beer, pina coladas, did I mention chocolate?!
But you know what? I was only sick twice last year and I didn’t have one single sinus infection or one single bronchitis infection… I don’t think it’s a coincidence!
January 10, 2008 at 4:46 am
Wow..that is quite a story..sounds like a great reason to become a veggie..ever since I became a veggie I can’t remember the last time I got sick..to you eventually take maynard with you?
January 10, 2008 at 7:03 am
I wish that I had! Maynard just stopped showing up one day
January 10, 2008 at 7:39 am
You’re so right about processed meat being loaded with hormones and antibiotics. I read an article once that girls as young as 8 or 9 are going through puberty and getting their periods all because of the hormones in meat. Isn’t that crazy. I eat meat but I am very picky about what I eat and I look for brands that do not use all those drugs and are grass fed instead of fed grain. Grass is their natural diet.
January 10, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Sounds like Maynard gave you a gift of sorts. I hardly ever get sick and if I do, I usually can trace it back to some processed crap I ate. But clean eating has made all the difference. I feel great. Oh and BTW, I gave up fish. So I’m ovo-lacto again.