[Buddha-l] Re:on eating meat

[Kate]

> If you had bought the little birds and released them they would have
> spent a few weeks starving for want of their native food or dying of
> the different climate. You did the right thing. In the story above, the
> folks are putting the fish back into the lake from which they were
> caught.

Thanks for your comforting words, Jim.  Unfortunately the birds were caught
locally.  There is every possibility they would have returned to their
normal habitat and have been caught again.

Mozambique, at that time was coming out of a twenty year civil war that
coincided with a twenty year drought.  As a combined result, just about
every creature from song birds to elephants ended up in the stew pots.
Prior to this, the capital city, Maputo, used to be a beautiful place - wide
tree-lined streets, paved walkways, marble columns and palm trees - a
playground for the European and African aristocracy.  I arrived shortly
after the war ended though there was still firing in the streets at night
and landmines on the golden beaches.  The place resembled downtown Beirut
with many locals living in abandoned cars and cardboard boxes.

The whole country had been stripped of wild life.  The only exception was
the little weaver birds that flittered around in the trees that lined the
streets.

Regards
Kate