Over at the awesome Animal Rights blog at Change.org, Stephanie Ernst has a post about a designer who uses taxidermy animals as light installations, for example, a flock of pigeons as a chandelier. And I completely agree with Stephanie – it is creepy.

Growing up, we had a mounted deer head on our living room wall. My father had killed it and wanted it mounted, though I’m not sure why this particular deer deserved such an honor since he’d killed plenty before and has killed plenty since.  He even named it. Billy Buck. I always hated that thing. And what was sad was that it wasn’t unique. The place I grew up is known for its hunting and fishing, and I would estimate that about 90% of the families who live there have a hunter in the family. I can’t even begin to try to guess how many mounted animals I’ve seen in my life: deer, fish, bobcats, ducks. Macabre trophys.

This isn’t much of an issue for the animal rights community, but I still want to discuss it. Mainly because whenever I’ve asked or talked to hunters about this, I get the same response: “It’s already dead, so it’s not hurting the animal. It just means we’re using all of it.” Um, you had to kill the animal before you could stuff it, so you actually are hurting it.

One of my friends once told me that even though animals are treated horribly in factory farming, there’s nothing wrong with eating meat because the animals you buy are already dead. So, by purchasing and eating meat, he was just making sure it didn’t go to waste. Except, you know, if people stopped bying meat, the demand would sink, and animals would stopped being killed.

Non-veg*ns try to make themselves more comfortable with such animal cruelty by deliberately blinding themselves and using the “it was already dead” argument. Not only is it not a logical argument in the least, but it does nothing to end the cruelty.