July 7: A modern Animal Farm

 To my discredit, I have never read George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, though I know what it's about. It comes marketed as a fable, an allegory against the totalitarian government of that murderous sonofabitch, Joseph Stalin. Orwell was an atheist who, nevertheless, frequently attended Anglican Church services and even had an Anglican funeral. This is not surprising. Writing is a solitary profession. When writers immerse themselves too long in their fictional universes, they often emerge starving for community. The church provides this and this is why religion will never die.

But now I find myself tasked with writing a modern version of Animal Farm. I am told that the animals must not die, which means the story will have to be a happy one. So instead, let's focus on one of the world's most fascinating and prevalent creatures, the existence of which will prompt some massive ethical headaches.

Ants.

Anyone who has ever owned an ant farm must have spent a few hours watching these fascinating workaholic creatures. Their social order is surprisingly human. Different ants play different roles, some of them even act as babysitters for the very young, and ant colonies sometimes number in the millions. They are able to solve complex problems. No one cares if some kid pours boiling aluminum into a manhole so they can make a sculpture from their tunnels. But shoot one lion and your dental practise will be boycotted.

This is strange because, according to Darwin, there's really no difference between ants and lions, or human beings for that matter. We all evolved to get where we are now and no species, ultimately, is more majestic than the other. When we get all angry because people are killing lions but we don't get angry that Aunt Hilda is genociding millions of mosquitoes with a bug zapper in her backyard, we are being inconsistent and illogical. But that's okay, sort of. Logic is a boring god. Human beings are emotional creatures. We always will be that way. This may be another reason religion will never die. It also explains professional sports.

I have a feeling that any story I write is going to be interrupted with all of these quasi-philosophical asides. I'm cool with that. Kurt Vonnegut made a living that way.

So one day there was an ant. The ant came from a large family. He had several aunts. The aunts did not have names. They were all called ant. So the ant had several Aunt Ants.

Terrible first draft. Let's start over.

This is a story of a colony of ants and a little boy named Fred. Fred was eight and he belonged to an informal group of kids called the Sugar Apple Creek Dumpling Gang or something silly like that. Fred was in the second grade at Anytown Public School, where his teacher wore a long grey skirt and had the students work out arithmetic problems on an actual chalkboard. Fred brought his lunch to school in a metal pail and he usually wore overalls, no matter how hot it was. His favourite TV show was Lassie (or maybe that was his favourite movie, I'm too lazy to look it up) and his dad was a farmer and his mother was, you guessed it, a housewife. She spent all her time making aprons, cooking sugar apple creek dumplings for her family of eight, and lighting her own farts.

That's kind of a cool opening paragraph. I doubt a literary agent would ask to see more if this appeared in a query letter, but this is note-a-day, not the New York Times Review of Books. So let's go on, shall we?

Fred's favourite things to do were catch crawdaddies (whatever those are) in the creek behind their home, chase butterflies, and kill insects. Presently, he had a magnifying glass in his back pocket. There was an anthill down by the creek and Fred was going to use the magnifying glass to turn sunlight into a superhot laser beam, which he would focus on a bunch of ants that never did him any harm at all. No one had a problem with this behaviour because it was understood that insects are inconsequential creatures and it's okay to kill billions of them simultaneously if they inconvenience even one human being.

While Fred was killing ants, his father, whose name was also Fred, was busy in the barn, which was filled with chickens and pigs and cows and horses. There were 25,000 animals in that barn because Fred Senior was an intensive livestock operator. The animals were not segregated. Pigs hobnobbed with chickens and cows. The barn was a stinking squawking breathing mooing clucking shitting mass.

There was a reason why the barn had 25,000 animals in it, (even though it had been built for a maximum capacity of 400.) The reason was that Fred Senior had recently converted to vegetarianism and had decided that all his animals would henceforth be used as pets and not as food. The animals, whose lives were now uninterrupted by abattoirs, now occupied themselves with reproduction. Poor Fred Senior was trampled to death by a bull who had just spotted a suitable cow to carry his seed. As Fred Senior's corpse lay on the ground of the barn, he was eaten and excreted by pigs. 

Well, I'm in a rare mood tonight. I'm not sure if this story has a moral (it probably does.) The moral could be that I should retire note-a-day but I'm kind of thinking that it might be something bad about vegetarianism or animal welfare or veganism. Honestly, I think vegetarianism has some advantages. I think there are health benefits and it's probably good for the environment, but I like steak too much to take it up. I was raised in Alberta, after all.

As Fred Junior killed his 100th ant, he became aware of a sudden whooshing sound from across the farm. He looked at his house and saw that it was on fire. He had no way of knowing this but his mother had successfully lit a fart (her late husband's importuning of an all-bean diet had assisted in this) and now the entire house was going to be a writeoff.

But the animals were okay. The ants were mostly okay. Fred Junior had killed 100 of them but there were still 634,348,530 in this particular colony. He tried to feel the same way about his family, reminding himself that, although seven people had died that day as a result of vegetarianism and flatulence, that there were still 7,834,438,328 people on planet Earth. Of course none of them loved him the way his family might have but Fred Junior knew he could find other people to love him.

Fred Junior watched as the barn imploded and animals poured out of there like they were getting off of Noah's Ark.  A cow ran out into the street and a pickup truck swerved to avoid hitting it. The truck collided wth a tree and the driver, who was the sole occupant, died. The driver was not wearing his seatbelt. (Thanks, Mr. Darwin.) Now there were 7,834,438,327 people. 

Fred felt a tap on his shoulder and he looked back to see George Orwell standing there. He asked Fred if he was okay and Fred said that he was, even though he was having difficulty processing everything. Fred sad he thought it was funny that, if an airplane crashed and 20 people died, it was a tragedy that made headlines around the world but the fact that he had killed five times as many ants wouldn't even get a mention on the bottom of page F19 in the Upper Armpit Bugle. Conversely, if some poachers kill some elephants in Africa, they will be ostracized around the world. George Orwell said that's because human beings engage in something called speciesism, which is the belief that some species are more important than others. That might not make much sense from a Darwinian perspective, George said, but it's probably necessary that we adopt such a mindset.

Fred understood that this was true but it still raised questions in his mind. He looked at one of the chickens, which was fluttering around the burning fabric of what used to be the curtains of Fred's bedroom, and realized that just last month, he had eaten that chicken's sister for supper. This enraged a few people, not enough to bring about a national boycott of Berk's Fried Chicken, but those same people would get all misty eyed when a dentist shoots a lion while on a safari in Kenya. Fred was only eight but he still knew that those same people who boo hoo hood about the dead lion would be killed and eaten by that lion if the lion was given the chance. 

"Maybe it has something to do with size," Fred Junior said. "Ants are so small that we can't really see 'em but elephants are huge and it's hard to miss 'em. Might also have to do with the fact that the world isn't really running out of ants so they're not really seen as expendable. Or maybe it's just because lions are cute and ant ain't. But really, why does it matter if we run out of lions or elephants, or people for that matter? I mean... isn't it just kind of a coin toss that we're here anyway?"

"I don't know," said George Orwell. "But you've given me a pretty amazing idea for a novel."

I'm not sure if this lousy note is a good one or not. All I know is that the only thing my terrible and sometimes scatological short story does is reaffirm the thesis statement I make in paragraph five. Sometimes I get a little frightened when things like this come out of me. Lord only knows that my readers tend to prefer it when note-a-day channels Mr. Rogers and I'm all vulnerable and I talk about rainbows and birds and Amanda Marshall concerts. Perhaps tomorrow, we'll return to our regularly scheduled broadcast. Today, unfortunately, you're stuck with this awful experiment.

Now I'm hungry. Gonna cook me some steak.