It's dinner time for the piranha

I was standing in line Saturday at the pet store, in my hand was a plastic bag filled with water and about 50 comets (small gold fish).

As has been the case before, this led to a puzzled look from the person standing behind me in line at the cashier’s station.

“Just babysitting my youngest son’s fish while he is away at college,” was and is my standard reply. Of course I know this answer doesn’t really explain a thing. But I’ve been asked so many times I have a bit of fun with the strange looks I get.

“They’re piranha,” is my standard reply after I wait a second or two for the puzzlement to grow on the questioner’s face.

What follows is a brief history of how my eldest son got his youngest brother interested in such creatures, then bought him some for Christmas a few years later.

Invariable this leads to questions about how dangerous they are and how I must have to be careful when I feed them.

Coincidentally, a week earlier I had seen a television special on piranha living in the wild of South America. Since then my answer to the dangerous question has been tempered a bit.

Yes, they can be dangerous in the wild (the television special focused on the death of a young child attacked by piranha). But in captivity, they are more afraid of me than I am of them. They swim quickly to the far end of the aquarium when I reach in to do some cleaning and straighten a plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle that decorates the aquarium.

As I offered the piranha their dinner later that night, the contrast between piranha as pets and child-killers struck me. As a society we have lost touch with the real world. In the United States we miss the killer instinct of wild beasts such as lions and polar bears. Instead we think of them as something to cuddle up to at night or to try to pet at the zoo.

Whereas throughout most of the world, there is a healthy respect for nature’s food chain – big kills and eats little, bigger kills and eats big, biggest kills and eats bigger. (Sure, this is a bit simplistic, but my point stands).

I got a lesson from my uncle along this line many years ago. Uncle Bill had taken in several young raccoons whose mother had been killed. In doing so, he warned my cousin the day would come that these raccoons would have to be released back into the wild.

Why? Because it is their nature to be wild, not domesticated.

Sure enough, as these raccoons grew they were no longer cuddly, docile creatures. They became dangerous – and as such were released to be the wild animals they were and are intended to be.

I sometimes think we live in a bubble. No, I know we live in a bubble.

Walt Disney perfected the art of making the most scary and dangerous creatures cute and cuddly – a myth society perpetuates to this day.

Nature demands a pecking order; we just don’t see it. Go to the grocery store to buy meat. Where does it come from? No, it doesn’t come from some cute cartoon-like chickens or some cow that moos sweet nothings in your ear.

It comes from a herd of cattle grown, killed and trimmed to your liking. It comes from a turkey or a chicken purposefully raised to feed the masses.

It’s the same process that has gone on for generations and ages around the world. Of course, in India it’s not cattle as it’s not pork products in some other lands. And there are cultures where dog or horsemeat fill the dinner plate instead of Mary’s little lamb.

OK, I can see you cringing at the thought of horse or dog meat. And some of you are feeling sad about Mary’s little lamb. That’s fine for those of us who live in a bubble with plenty of other choices for lunch or dinner.

But as the story about piranha and the dead child in South America points out, much of the world lives outside our bubble – the good old US of A.

By this time I probably have PETA fuming as well as any vegetarians reading this gritting their teeth.

Let me draw a distinction between the two.

I respect vegetarians who live that lifestyle because they see it as healthful. For the most part, science has proven them right up against traditionally meat-ladden menus across much of the United States.

Conversely, I have a very hard time accepting the philosophy of groups such as PETA that too often want to protect Walt Disney’s soft and cute Bambi or Briar Rabbit. What about the rights of those ugly, gross worms … or the protest over chocolate-covered crickets?

Like it or not, that chubby polar bear at the zoo is a wild animal. Just as is the tiger that mauled and nearly killed Roy Horn of the famous animal act of Siegfried & Roy.

As for my son’s piranha, I no longer accept questions like “How can you?” when referring to the death of 50 or so gold fish.

That fish tank has served - and still serves - a very useful purpose, in addition to still fascinating some of my sons. It is a reminder of the real world, not the fantasy one we might like to exist. It is also a healthy reminder that in some parts of the world adults and children are killed and eaten by animals we bubble-ized Americans find cute and cuddly.

That doesn’t mean we have to be wantonly cruel about how we go about eating our way through life. It also doesn’t mean Bambi-fying all of nature’s four, six or many-more legged creatures.