Perhaps the greatest joy of Scottish Terrier companionship is discovering the unique ways each is a little character in a Scottie-fur coat. No two are exactly alike. They may share some characteristics but each little personality is one of a kind.

I’m learning that is true also of my chickens. It isn’t true that a chicken is a chicken is a chicken. My girls and their boy-toy rooster came to us in pairs of three chicken ‘breeds’:  Plymouth Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, and Buff Orpingtons. But I’m learning they are not clones; they are seven distinct feathered personalities. Despite being the same age and having been exposed to the same socialization and hand-taming since they were day-old chicks, they have distinctive and individual character. One may be dominant, another submissive; one “hums” more than the others; one starts wild races by being the first to initiate mad dashes around the chicken yard; one chortles more than she hums, another more nearly sings; one is more curious than the others, pecking first at my watchband or dangling keys when I bend down to fill their feeder, another hangs back and is last to come to the feed bowl.

My birds have changed my thinking about chickens. I can no longer see chickens as merely  “meat.” I know chickens are more. They are personalities.

As I prepare for Thanksgiving Day this year and traditional turkey and trimmings I’m going to think differently about the turkey on my plate. I’ve never owned turkeys or been around them daily to know their ways but my inference, based on my experience with my flock of chickens, is that turkeys, too, are birds of intelligence, curiosity, mood, and personality, true individuals rather than mere replicates. My assumption is turkeys are ‘characters’ not just meat.

So will knowing that the turkey on my feast day plate is a life, not just a lunch, keep me from eating my Thanksgiving Day dinner? No. But knowing that I live by the death of others will make me eat with more authentic gratitude and reverence. It is false innocence to suppose any of us live harmlessly in the world. The circle of life is sustained by death for death is inherent in the food chain from earth’s humus to the earth’s ‘humus’ beings. For me, to know I owe my life to sacrificed other life moves me not to recklessness but to fuller appreciation and reverence. My prayer of thanks over my turkey dinner this year will be more reverential than in the past because my animals and birds are teaching me to live as a compassionate carnivore.

Some may find my ‘compassionate carnivore’ an oxymoron, but I don’t. I accept the deep symbolism of the Judaeo-Christian tradition that sacrificial death redeems life, that another’s body is broken for us, and that those thus redeemed owe gratitude and praise. As I see it, my role at the table of life is not detachment, still less denial of my human impacts. My role is to be more aware, more reverent, and more thankful for every grace that sustains me.

So, thank you, ‘Mr. T,’ for making my day. I abhor the ways you are commercially warehoused, slaughtered, and eaten as if you are no more than ‘breast’ and ‘meat.’ Such treatment speaks more to the mindlessness and soullessness of my kind than the absence of personality and character in your kind.

My meal and my special day is made possible by your sacrifice. I pledge to eat in true thankfulness for the sacrament it is.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine