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I like to fish. Part of the thing that comes with fishing is killing the fish you catch. I've caught and killed numerous fish in my lifetime.
I've also gone crabbing and shellfishing (part and parcel of the whole Puget Sound gig) considerably--mussels, clams, oysters, etc. Shoot, somewhere my boyfriend has a picture of me opening an oyster on the beach and eating it raw. And boy, that was a good oyster!
I also once ran over a cat...but I prefer not to talk about that...and the only chicken I've had die on my watch was a pet. I didn't kill it; it suffered from a congenital defect of some kind that only manifested itself after it was a few weeks old.
A pet I did kill, though accidentally: in second grade, I was playing with the class rat after school while waiting for my bus. I was sitting cross-legged on the carpet. A popular activity was to let the rat crawl all over your crossed legs and use your lap as a sort of pen. I went to place the wriggling rat in my lap, and on the way down it slipped. The rat fell maybe a few inches, the rat's nose hit my knee, and the poor rat started doing backflips all over the classroom carpet, leaving a trail of blood before it finally collapsed, twitching to death. Talk about trauma--killing the class pet! I felt horrible about it. Still do, actually. I never handled rats again and probably will never own a rodent. I think I'll go with snakes: they're harder to kill.
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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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