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22 January 2007

Something disturbing... →[More:]

One of my students told me a story. Seems that back in DR, her family raised rabbits for food. My student especially enjoyed the eyes. The salty pop (her words). Now, this in itself is not so strange. One's heard of such delicacies. It's what my student did next that's rather chilling. You see, not wanting to wait for the next slaughter, she went out to the rabbit pens and plucked out their eyes, collecting them in a bowl. She then went inside and fried them up.

"I left them alive," she said. "Just blind. It was funny the way they bumped into each other in the cage."

Thing is, she's one of the most charming, bright, and personable students I've had.

(Maybe it's a good thing we're not bunnies anymore.)
post by: Pips at: 18:48 | 64 comments
she's one of the most charming, bright, and personable students I've had.

FYI, that's what people said about Ted Bundy.
posted by muddgirl 22 January | 18:53
EEEEEEEEEEK.

:((

*squicked out*

and by the way, we are still bunnies!!
posted by By the Grace of God 22 January | 18:53
I just don't get how anyone could torture an animal like that.

Raise animals for food, yes. Dig out their eyes, leaving them blind and in pain, no.
posted by Specklet 22 January | 18:56
Oh.

God.
posted by hugsnkisses 22 January | 18:57
In the New Yorker this week, there is a Sedaris story with something tangential to this.

Pips, I am sorry you had to hear that. . .is it hard to know what to do with that info, meaning that, how can you look at that kid the same, anymore?
posted by danf 22 January | 18:59
I've spent a little time in th DR and I don't think that would be seen as normal there either.
posted by arse_hat 22 January | 19:05
Well, I'm still rather fond of her, actually, danf. The lack of compassion for the rabbits did disturb me, but she was used to seeing them killed and all. She thought it was better to at least leave them alive.

We were doing a poetry project at the time and I urged her to write it up as a poem. She did; quite a good poem at that.

(It is a story that stays with you, though. But I'm a girl who tried to hang her cat when I was kid, so I have a pretty high tolerance. Good thing my mother caught me in time.)
posted by Pips 22 January | 19:07
Sweet Jesu! What the shit!?

I can't imagine the bunnies were too quiet or complacent about having their motherfucking eyes plucked out of their goddamn heads. Every bunny I've ever met has been a fighter. Rabbits are dignified creatures and do not lay still for bad handling.
posted by loquacious 22 January | 19:07
Eh, people tell both me and pips shit like this all the time. Last night at the bar some drunk was telling me how he personally cut off his father's oxygen in the hospital when he said he couldn't handle the pain of cancer anymore.

We're both weirdness magnets, and maybe our mutual magnetism cancels out our mutual weird. or something.
posted by jonmc 22 January | 19:10
Whoa.
posted by brainwidth 22 January | 19:11
Good grief! How cruel.

I wonder how she severed the optical nerve and the vessels that hold the eyeball in place. Did she just pinch it off like she was deadheading a flower?
posted by LoriFLA 22 January | 19:11
(Winnie the barmaid-who knows me-told me 'if you keep talking to him, he'll eventually start a fight with you.' I kept that in mind. I guess I manged to finish drinking before his nutso-meter went into the red)
posted by jonmc 22 January | 19:12
Yes. That is disturbing.
posted by gaspode 22 January | 19:18
Oh lord.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is DR?
posted by jrossi4r 22 January | 19:26
Dominican Republic.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 22 January | 19:32
The salty pop is why I like sushi with roe. Eyeballs is a little squicky for me tho, especially blinding all the rabbits. Ick ick ick.
posted by eekacat 22 January | 19:33
Yes, Dominican Republic. I teach in the Bronx and I have a lot of students from DR (they refer to it that way and I've picked up the habit). My recounting of the story, however, is in no way meant to disparage DR, of course. It just happens to be where it took place.

I am unforgiveably gleeful at the shock value of the story, I'm afraid, but genuinely still trying to wrap my brain around it, too. She's a sweet girl, really. No "serial killer" vibe at all, and I'm pretty good at picking up such vibes.

(LoriFLA, the writer in me finds your description of pinching the optical nerves and vessels like deadheading a flower just brilliant...)
posted by Pips 22 January | 19:38
Thanks Pips!
posted by LoriFLA 22 January | 19:51
My cousin (I think he was no more than six years old at the time) once killed a goldfish, removed its eyes and popped them. When asked why he did that, he said he was feeling sick, so he killed the fish, absorbed its soul, and felt better.

Cute things these kids...
posted by qvantamon 22 January | 20:00
Yeah, what loquacious said. We had a pet rabbit when I was a kid, and there were other rabbits around. They can bite and scratch and kick, and they scream bloody murder when there's something they don't like. In addition, it's just not that easy to pull animals' eyes from their sockets, which I know from various dissections while teaching science.

Put me down as doubtful. She's either a little bit out there, or she's messing with you.
posted by Miko 22 January | 20:01
Um. Ewwww. I can see if you're used to raising the rabbits as food, but Heaven-on-a-pin, treating the animals as if they have no feelings, suffer no pain, just galls me. I'm sorry to ask, but how did you react? Because I think my first reaction would have been "OMG, the poor things! How horribly painful!!!!!"
posted by redvixen 22 January | 20:04
Oh I so did NOT need to read that, Pips.

*cries*

posted by bunnyfire 22 January | 20:05
Ah...thanks for clearing that up.

That story reminds me of the cavalier "Pets or Meat" rabbit lady from Roger and Me.

There's a certain necessary callousness that develops from raising animals to be eaten. We're surrounded by farmers and hunters here, so it's pretty much the norm. I'm sure none of our neighbors would bat an eyelash at that story.

And I really don't doubt that it's possible. If slaughtering and dressing an animal is something you do with regularity, you know the right way to told them and how to take the parts you want swiftly.
posted by jrossi4r 22 January | 20:05
Again: we can discuss warfare, serial killers, crime etc. casually, even flippantly, but if cute animals are involved, everybody gets squicked. Odd that.
posted by jonmc 22 January | 20:10
It's pretty fucking horrific and I hope it isn't true - and I agree there's a good chance it isn't. There's a big difference between raising and hunting animals for food and plucking out their eyes while they're still alive. Like, serial killer difference. Pets or meat is one thing, sure, you pull them out of the hutch and whack them on the head and it's dinner - but pulling the eyes out of a living animal? Nope, sorry, that's not a cultural difference, it's not okay and it's not even slightly normal. It is the kind of image that someone who's been raised on a diet of horror movies and weird internet cartoons might come up with, though.
posted by mygothlaundry 22 January | 20:14
It was funny the way they bumped into each other in the cage.

HA HA HA YES THAT IS HILARIOUS! I ONCE LIT A BUM ON FIRE AND OH HOW WE LAUGHED AS HIS FLESH BUBBLED AND POPPED AND THE SCREAMS SEEMED TO GO ON FOR EVER!

Seriously, you have a very sick person in your class.

And jon, I'm pretty sure that everyone here would be equally grossed out if that psychopath had ripped a human's eyes out and laughed about it later.
posted by cmonkey 22 January | 20:14
And jon, I'm pretty sure that everyone here would be equally grossed out if that psychopath had ripped a human's eyes out and laughed about it later.

cmonkey, on mefi, mecha and elsewhere, I've heard people joke about and/or casually discuss crime victims, dead soldiers and the like way too often to buy that. (I'm not talking about you, you actually show consistency, but society in general, no).
posted by jonmc 22 January | 20:18
There's a big difference between raising and hunting animals for food and plucking out their eyes while they're still alive.

Agreed with mgl -- I'm no stranger to meat, butchering, and animal work, either, and it's just not believable. Sure, people who have subsitence animals around all that time can be more cavalier toward them, but they are also often mildly affectionate - and active cruelty tends to be seen as wasteful and disrespectful. In a lot of rural cultures, kids would be punished for stuff like that.
posted by Miko 22 January | 20:19
Sorry my English skills seem to be very poor tonight. Subsitence? Around all that time? Yeesh. Need coffee.
posted by Miko 22 January | 20:20
My dad went on a business trip to Taiwan when I was young. He told me that he went to dinner with his clients and they were served a whole cooked fish. Everyone picked off the side meat, then the clients offered my dad the head. He said they could have it and they proceeded to fight over the fish cheeks.

That squicked me out when I was a kid. But this... I mean, at least my dad's fish was cooked before they started plucking off parts of its face. And I've seen lamb eyes cut apart in science class. Eyes are gross inside.
posted by youngergirl44 22 January | 20:20
Well, for the record, I completely believe her. What I forgot before was they were baby rabbits. Not ready for slaughter yet. (Less of a fight, I imagine.)

Not that that makes the story any better.

Yeah, redvixen, I was a bit taken aback at the time. We were sharing childhood memories... you know, using freewriting to discover and develop material for poems (a tried and true method, to be sure)... and I didn't want to shut her down or shame her in front of the class. Plus, I didn't know what to say. She told the story so nonchalantly. The other students didn't react much either. I think she was only eleven or twelve at the time of the incident. Her poem showed she recognized it as gruesome now. But at the time, she just wanted more eyes to eat.

(I think jrossi has it right... it's particularly shocking to us cause we're not used to it. Not that I'm advocating such practices or anything.)
posted by Pips 22 January | 20:26
A guy drives past a farm, sees a pig with three legs. This sort of amazes him, so he stops and knocks on the door and asks the farmer about it.

"Oh, that's no ordinary pig," the farmer said. "That pig's a hero. A few weeks ago, I was plowing the
back 40 when the tractor falls on top of me. I'm trapped. Well, that pig sees it, and goes runnin' back to the farmhouse, grabs Becky by the apron, and drags her to me.
That pig right near saved my life!"

"Wow," said the traveler. "But why does he have only three legs?"

"Wal, a -pig like that, you don't eat all at once."

via Gene Weingarten.
posted by paulsc 22 January | 20:28
Fish cheeks --especially cod cheeks -- is a classic New England food. They're not bad. Nice succulent rounds of flesh.
posted by Miko 22 January | 20:31
Well, they almost certainly died within a couple of days of shock, blood loss and infection, particularly since they were babies, so that would be the end of one crop of rabbits.
posted by mygothlaundry 22 January | 20:32
Actually I can understand it a bit. Some cultures do not share our fondness for pets.

I had a friend that raised pigs. She could care less about the cute little piglets. There were many feral cats on her property. I would worry that they were cold at night or didn't have enough to eat. She saw them as a nuisance. She loved her dogs and horses, but didn't have regard for the other animals.
posted by LoriFLA 22 January | 20:39
Oh please don't think I'm excusing the behavior or don't find it horrifying. But I can remember my grandmother laughing about how funny it was to watch a chicken run around the yard with it's head half attached spraying blood all over if her father didn't land the blow correctly. This was the same woman who hand-fed peanuts to squirrels. But the chickens--they were somehow lesser.

On preview: Exactly, LoriFLA.
posted by jrossi4r 22 January | 20:42
Of course, one of my brothers had the exact opposite experience when he was a little boy. Our grandparents it seemed had a duck they were raising (this was long before I was born), and my brother loved visiting this duck. Naturally, they went over to grandma and grandpa's, who were old world Russian, for supper one day and what was on the menu but my brother's "pet" duck. He didn't eat duck for decades.

posted by Pips 22 January | 21:00
This kid has "FBI recruit" written all over her.
posted by mischief 22 January | 21:08
YOU WASCAWWY WABBIT!

I MUTIWATE YOU!

posted by jason's_planet 22 January | 21:27
I've also seen attitudes like the ones jrossi and LoriFLA mentioned, but there's an important difference.

If these rabbits are animals raised for food, it would certainly not have been normal for this girl to do something to them that would result in their deaths -- either, as mgl says, by shock and blood loss, or otherwise by the subsequent infection. That's like throwing money away, costing the family valuable resources, and it's materially different from watching the chicken run around.

The chicken's a goner by that point anyway, and it's served its purpose in making it to the dinner table. The running around is just part of the slaughtering process, which would be proceeding either way. That's not the same thing as pulling parts of the animal off long before slaughtering day -- that's really just unheard of.

And the feral cats and piglets? It makes sense that she was indifferent to animals that were not pets (and in the case of the cats, not her responsibility). But indifference doesn't equal active efforts at torture.

I continue to assert that this behavior really wouldn't be seen as normal in any culture that raises food animals.
posted by Miko 22 January | 22:41
P.S. In trying to substantiate the idea that rabbit eyes were some sort of delicacy in the DR (I couldn't), I inadvertently learned that a traditional food of Ecuador is whole roast guinea pig.

posted by Miko 22 January | 22:48
"whole roast guinea pig" tastes like chicken.
posted by mischief 22 January | 23:00
Well, in Ohio we ate Buckeyes...
posted by Pips 22 January | 23:32
The other students didn't react much either.

This strikes me as being as disturbing as the story itself.
posted by bigblueroom 22 January | 23:35
I remember sitting in my yard, lounging in the grass. I was probably four years old. I had a grasshopper in my hand and pulled off one of his legs. My father immediately gave me a talk about cruelty and empathy and asked how I would like it if my leg were pulled off. I felt terrible and remorseful and never did anything like that again.

Obviously this girl didn't have this talk. Or, maybe she's a sociopath.
posted by LoriFLA 22 January | 23:43
*runs screaming from thread*
posted by stilicho 22 January | 23:56
Disturbing? That's nothing. I give you: Titty-Foot!
posted by ColdChef 23 January | 00:29
Four is borderline not old enough to know better. Twelve is....do you have any inkling of what her family life is like otherwise? The Bosie I knew came off as very charming, intelligent and sensitive too. By the time I realized that something wasn't right it had gotten to the point where I was thinking "If he weren't around, who would be?" He stole my wallet when I found out my grandfather was dying. Are the nurse, dean and counsellors good people where you are?
posted by brujita 23 January | 00:35
Imagine she had instead developed a taste for brains. "Brains... brains..."
posted by mischief 23 January | 01:03
or bunny prairie oysters.
posted by arse_hat 23 January | 01:06
Well, in Ohio we ate Buckeyes...


Seriously? I assume you're either referring to the chocolate-peanut butter kind, unless you were blanching them first.

I'm also a bit skeptical of the girl's story. No adults stopped her? I can't imagine nobody heard the bunnies screaming.
posted by me3dia 23 January | 01:25
Well, in Ohio we ate Buckeyes...


Seriously? I assume you're either referring to the chocolate-peanut butter kind, unless you were blanching them first.

I'm also a bit skeptical of the girl's story. No adults stopped her? I can't imagine nobody heard the bunnies screaming.
posted by me3dia 23 January | 01:25
ummmmm. HELLO?

Little kids lie. A lot. And for no good reason. Usually to get attention.

And most of them have very active imaginations. How anyone can actually believe this story is pretty amazing.
posted by scala di seta 23 January | 01:48
Well, I’m speaking from a Muslim’s perspective here—and I’ve seen animals being slaughtered before, and then opened up and their entire skins removed and their intestines drawn out and what not—and my first reaction to this was—OH MY GOD!
Maybe I’m just not as used to animal cruelty as I thought I was. Not that sacrificing an animal has to be cruel—but dear god—tearing its eyes out while its still alive—dear god in heaven.
posted by hadjiboy 23 January | 02:20
I've also known families who raised animals for food (admittedly this was in Wyoming and California and not the Dominican Republic), and (sorry, Pips) this rings false to me, as well: as Miko and others have said, even without a sentimental, "my widdle cuddly bunny pet" attachment to your animals, it would be extraordinarily unusual to casually torture (and no doubt wind up killing, from blood loss and shock) a group of animals like this for the sake of a snack -- because, bottom line, you'd be in some DEEP MOTHERFUCKING SHIT for throwing away your family's food and income like that.

I find it almost inconceivable that a mentally healthy 12-year-old raised under such circumstances would behave in such a way, no matter how many animals her family routinely slaughtered for meat. An infinitely simpler and more likely explanation is that she's telling a very attention-getting story. Alternatively, if it really is the truth, then it's potentially a childhood precursor to psychopathy (yes, even if she's otherwise bright and charming -- in fact, quite possibly especially if she's otherwise bright and charming).

Either way, what she describes is not normal life-on-the-farm behavior.
posted by scody 23 January | 03:06
jonmc: we can discuss warfare, serial killers, crime etc. casually, even flippantly, but if cute animals are involved, everybody gets squicked

I think that to truly horrify people, you have to tone down the violence to a level they can comprehend. This is why (f'rexample) the phrase "The world exploded and everyone died" seems less disturbing than "he punched his wife."

I think the same applies here.
posted by seanyboy 23 January | 03:45
We used to catch stone crabs, pull off their one big claw, then throw the crab back in the water, where they'd eventually grow a new claw. And live sushi isn't at all uncommon--flounder sushi is served atop the still-breathing carcass. Raw oysters are alive, at least at the moment they shell is opened, and I've dropped live lobsters into boiling water and seen them cut in half and put under a broiler while struggling mightily. Squicky, yeah, but they aren't cute like bunnies.
posted by mrmoonpie 23 January | 10:29
*thinks happily about the tofu he had last night for dinner*
posted by tr33hggr 23 January | 10:40
moonpie, just walk though Chinatown. All the seafood stalls are filled with fish so fresh they're still trying to breathe. That whole neighborhood is one big aquatic snuff film.
posted by jonmc 23 January | 10:49
Oh, yeah, jon--the live turtles and frogs gross me out the most, maybe because I see them in pet stores, too.
posted by mrmoonpie 23 January | 11:21
It's true about the fish cheeks. It does taste nice. But it's not too nice to fight over food, even in Taiwan.

A friend of mine used to help deal with feral cats on her grandmother's farm. They can't be allowed to live because they overpopulate, breed disease, and die-- sick and underfed. This wasn't in another country, though. It was in the Midwest.



posted by halonine 23 January | 13:55
"nobody heard the bunnies screaming"

Silence of the Bunnies
posted by mischief 23 January | 23:40
Thanks for all the comments, folks. It's funny how some refuse to believe it. It is tough to wrap your mind around.

ColdChef... Titty-Foot? Now that's gotta beat Dr. Scholl's anyday.

(mischief... if I could have two husbands : )
posted by Pips 24 January | 00:49
It's funny how some refuse to believe it.

And I find it funny how some believe it without question, especially anyone that's been around children.

Could it be true? Sure. Is it? IMHO no, for all the reasons already stated.
posted by justgary 24 January | 03:15
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