I'll be feeding on my neighborhood vegetarians, as squirrels are too fast, and pitbulls too mean...

Shut up, ECB.

Yeah, because CLIF bars are, like, the only shelf stable vegan item.

Enjoy digesting those rabbits!

It's hard to avoid the impression that you're actually looking forward to this, Erica.

I want Bird Flu.

I'm with Mr. Poe. Vegetarians may be lean and stringy, but bagging one isn't that hard. Plus the meat is tangy and pretty good salted.

Is bird flu is the environmentalist version of the Rapture? What's with the fascination with a virus which may or may not have a deadly contagious mutation whose probability of occurence we can't even begin to estimate?

You can lay quite an effective vegetarian trap with a baseball bat, a few yards of macrame, and an Utne Reader, Greg...

@7 - Dude, that's a GREAT analogy!

I don't trust those who do not eat steak.

Hurrrr some pretty funny jokes there. Where did you get the time to come up with them, is nascar season over or something?

39 days, 21 hours, 56 minues, and 7 seconds to Daytona!

Uhhhh, beef?

Actually @11, consuming large amounts of protein increases brain-function, allowing carnivores to spin off jokes 47% faster than vegans.

It's totally a FACT!

Vegeterians are lousy hunters.

They don't need to be good ones.

Vegetables is sloowwwww....

@14, Actually, excess protein (which both vegetarians and meat-eaters get in abundance) is just stored as fat and causes calcium loss.

Carnivore diets do cause cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and strokes though, and you probably have several loved ones who died from the tradition of meat eating, but whatevs, right? Killing things is funneee!

I hate you guys.

I'm stocking up on Hormel Vegetarian Chili and Vodka. 1 Gallon per person per day.

Why do all the vegetarians I see at PCC in Wedgewood look like death worn over, with white pasty skin and dry limp hair? Shit, eat a hamburger or some of my german sausage I got right between my legs. OH YEAH!! Meat Rocks and Rocks My World!

Um, the way Avian Bird Flu (H5N1) works is it's spread from person-to-person.

So, you would have to live in a log cabin far from any humans AND birds.

You're just as much at risk as the rest of us.

Don't believe me? Ask UW's Epidemiologists.

and while we're on topic, isn't Avian Bird Flu a little redundant? Like ATM machine.

Maybe it should be Person-transmitted Bird Flu. Or something.

Real men eat meat.

Can we stop with the veg/meat-eater binary and start distinguishing between obnoxious food extremists (including both flaked-out veg-heads and sausage-boy at @19 up there) and NORMAL PEOPLE (veg or non-veg)?

Whatever you choose to eat, there's no reason to get evangelical about it. Vegetarianism is not a religion.

Here's the very reasonable Ira Glass on how he made his choice:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=J1TcL0wZ-pM

If the Flying Spaghetti Monster wanted us to be vegetarian, he wouldn't contain giant meatballs.

Being a vegetarian is irrelevant to the bird flu.

You won't get bird flu from properly COOKED chicken. You WILL, however, get bird flu when it starts spreading human-to-human, in which case those with access to a vaccine and a healthy immune systems will be the survivors.

When it comes to preparing for the apocalypse, you'd do best to have the broadest dietary options possible.

@22, actually, vegetarian women taste very good, IMHO. Based on my personal experience.

@14:

Not in my family. Whatever serious coronary problems we've had were congenital - and my meat-eating, heart-disease-having grandfather still hit 93 before kicking off. One meat-eating grandma is now 91, another (the one with the crock of bacon grease setting on the stove-top) is a robust 87.

Both parents, both meat-eaters - still very much alive, even my overweight, ex-smoker pop with the two multiple bypasses under his belt (French fries are his major downfall - a vegetable, if I recall correctly), but even he's still going strong, thanks to a change of locale (living at 7,000 feet can be hard on an old person's ticker).

And of course, I don't have to worry about deficiencies of important vitamins and amino acids - which only occur naturally in animal products. So, keep popping your one-a-days stick-boy, you'll need 'em.

And just for the record, killing things isn't funneee so much as - yummmmiiieee!

Besides, if TFSM HADN'T wanted us to eat animals, why did he give us incisors, small stomachs, and a loooong small intestine?

@26 -- I was inspired to stop eating meat once long ago when an ex-boyfriend told me his vegetarian ex-girlfriend tasted -- get this -- "citrusy". Citrusy! I ask you, who doesn't want to taste like a nectarine?

Oh wait, nectarines aren't a citrus fruit...uhh... Who doesn't want to taste like a fresh-squeezed orange, then?

@27,

Long small intestines are better suited for digesting plant matter. Short small intestines are better suited for digesting meat.

And what are you on about claiming that only animal products have "naturally occurring" vitamins and amino acids? Wrong. Dead wrong.

@ 19,

Doesn't everyone is Seattle look like that?

It's called the "Seattle Tan."