This is something I wrote just after I saw Jurassic Park when summers were cooler and winters colder than in previous years (or they seemed so to me):

UP THE FOOD CHAIN

I haven't looked at food the same way since I saw Jurassic Park. When some flinty-eyed carnivore is looking at you as the source of lunch, and I don't mean picking up the check at McDonald's, it makes you take another look at the food chain. I went home after the movie with the willies, looking around every corner, expecting to see a T-Rex or a Velociraptor come screaming down at me. It brings a whole new concept to being the guest of honor for dinner. I wonder if cows and pigs and chickens have the same feelings.

Mama Cow to Steer: You've been invited to dinner at the Joneses.

Steer: Great. When do we eat?

Mama Cow: You don't understand. They eat. You don't.

Steer: Then why invite me to dinner?

Mama: You are dinner.

Steer: Oh. I think I'm busy tonight.

Mama: Sorry, Junior, you don't have any choice in the matter.

Steer: First they make me into a eunuch and then they plan to eat me? Talk about adding insult to injury. Can I file a lawsuit?

Mama: I'm afraid you have no recourse. You're part of the food chain. Plants eat dirt and sunlight, you eat plants, and carnivores eat you.

Steer: How do I become a carnivore?

At least that steer knows where he is on the food chain. We human beings tend to think of ourselves as being at the top of the food chain so it's a little disconcerting, not to say confusing, to suddenly discover there was a species that would have mistaken us for lunch. Maybe it's our own fault; we can't seem to make up our minds whether we're herbivores (vegetarians) or carnivores. We eat both ways which makes us omnivores. Omnivores eat anything that doesn't eat them first.

We've trained most of the current carnivores, through aversion therapy, to not eat humans. They eat us, we shoot them. This tends to be a little confusing for the animal kingdom because we sometimes shoot them anyway. Carnivores don't usually eat other carnivores so to reinforce the aversion therapy, we eat just enough meat to make us unpalatable. Maybe dinosaurs didn't have palates.

I have my own theory as to why dinosaurs became extinct until Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg resurrected them. These were huge sons-of-guns. With healthy appetites. The herbivores ate so many plants that after a few million years of denuding the planet of vegetation, they were running out of food and began starving to death. However, these weakened, starving herbivores made easy meals for the carnivores who then got fat and lazy since they didn't have to chase their food anymore. It must have been like having a delicatessen on every street corner. (Sound like any species you know?) But it didn't last long. The growing lack of vegetation caused global warming. Global warming is, according to current scientific theory, when the planet's temperature gradually warms up thereby causing a greenhouse effect. In actuality the winters currently are getting colder and the summers cooler so the scientists spend all their time trying to explain how it's really getting warmer when it's actually getting colder. I figure that eventually global warming froze all the dinosaurs to death.

Anyway, I know what I'm going to do if I meet a carnivorous dinosaur in an alley. I'm going to explain how carnivores don't eat carnivores and then give it the address of any vegetarians I know. In this carnivore eat herbivore world, you have to look out for yourself.

Me: You can't eat me; I'm a carnivore, too.

Dinosaur: So?

Me: So, carnivores don't eat carnivores. We don't taste good.

D: Oh. You're a carnivore so I can't eat you.

Me: (Patiently) Right.

D: It seems like such a waste. I have to kill you but I don't get to eat you.

Me: What do you mean you have to kill me?

D: This territory isn't big enough for two carnivores.

Me: Ah. Didn't anyone explain to you about us humans?

D: Explain what?

Me: We're the meanest, baddest things that ever walked the earth.

I shot him while he was still laughing. We don't need dinosaurs to help make us extinct; we're doing fine on that score all by ourselves. Meanwhile, pass the steak.

Copyright Patricia McFarland 1993