Eating the Creatures of the World.

At Christmas we took the boys to the park to feed the ducks. They had a great time pelting the mostly-appreciative birds with bread and what they lacked in accuracy of aim they made up for with enthusiasm. We had a great time getting the ducks to come as close as possible until a bouncy dog snaffled the last of our bread and was seen off by shouts of "BAD dog, NAUGHTY dog" by an indignant SmallMad.

When we got home we announced that we were having duck for tea, and told them we'd smuggled one home from the park. They were delighted but strangely didn't question where the feathers on the duck had gone. We quite deliberately were trying to get them to equate their dinner with the live animal so they understood where their food came from. Chaos-man fishes, so they understand that they eat the fish he (sometimes) catches but we weren't sure whether they got the bird/meat thing. They were more than happy with it though.

When we sat down to eat, and after poking the meat a bit suspiciously, they both tasted it and pronounced it delicious. "It's better than NORMAL meat Dad!" "Can we have this again?" "I Like eating ducks". Their plates were cleaned and the meal was deemed a success. We overheard them telling their cousins the next day that they'd caught a duck in the park and had it for dinner and that it was really nice. Being very happy that they both understood the origins of meat we thought no more of it.

However, they both now regularly ask for duck for tea and view chicken as an inferior meat. As catching ducks in the park isn't really an option we've made a rather costly rod for our own back I think. I'm just glad we didn't start them off on Goose.