Let me share a story. You can glean whatever you want from it, or
nothing at all.
My father is a
farmer. Unlike most
farm kids, I very rarely helped out on the
farm, but a few months ago, I did come home from
college for a few days to drive the
tractor a bit. I was to
till up the ground so that the
crop could be planted there later.
There's a species of
bird (I can't remember the name, perhaps someone can help me out) that builds its
nest on open ground such as in the middle of
fields. What makes this bird
unique is that when something it perceives as a
predator approaches its nest, it doesn't attempt to
defend the nest like many birds, it runs away from the nest, attempting to draw as much attention to itself as possible, and trying to act as a decoy to lure the
enemy away from the nest. In the wild, most predators will chase the mother bird instead of attacking the
camoflauged nest, and the
mother will return to the nest after the predator tires (these are very, very engergetic little birds).
A number of such birds had made nests in the field. And, logically, these birds see
20-ton John Deere tractors as
predators, but their
diversionary tactics don't generally work very well on a tractor driver who's only concerned with getting the field
plowed.
As I drove up and down the field, the mother birds would run around in
frenzy whenever I was nearby, and then go back and squat in their nests after I had passed. The first two nests, I plowed into oblivion without even noticing them. The mother birds from those two nests, as well as others trying to distract me from other nests, tended to blunder in the
blades of the plow and meet their
doom also (this was one of those
speed demon 14
MPH tractors).
I felt bad about smashing those nests and eggs under tons of razor-sharp steel
blades. The
mothers who had not yet despondently thurst themselves in front of the tractor would return to the spots where their
children had been sleeping peacefully, only to find
freshly-plowed ground where their nest had been.
I took note of where the remaining birds in the fields were sitting, assured that that's where their nests were located. I mentally marked the next such
spot I would come to, and when I approached it (mother bird gesturing insultingly at me), I brought the tractor to stop, hopped out, harvested the eggs from the nest, and carried them over to the edge of the field, and left them beside a
pool of water where a number of the mother birds seemed to gather to drink. I knew it was
futile, though: the mother birds would never return to the eggs once they had been touched by
humans. The
eggs would never hatch. They would
die.
I knew I had wasted my time saving that nest, but just the same, I took great care to not let that nest's mother bird
suicide herself under the tractor, which was quite a challenge. But what could I do about the rest of the nests in the field?
I plowed every single one of them into the fucking ground. Gee,
I'm sorry, but did you have a BETTER
idea?
I probably killed about 50 birds and potential-birds that day, over the course of plowing the field.
What were we growing in that field?
Soy.
Enjoy your Veggieburger!