Slow, Ugly, and Flightless: The Animals We Turn Into Food

I was at the Outback Steakhouse the other night, enjoying a delicious filet of salmon, when an interesting question occurred to me.  Specifically, "How did mankind decide which animals we would use as our primary food sources?"  Why do we eat cows, but not horses?  Why pigs, but not raccoons?  Why chickens, but not yellow-billed cotinga?  I mean, have you ever TRIED yellow-billed cotinga?  For all we know, they're absolutely scrumptious.

After giving the matter some thought (yes, I do indeed think about these things), I've reached an iron-clad and irrefutable conclusion:

Human beings are lazy and stupid, so we'll only eat slow, ugly animals and birds that can't fly.

Yes, I realize that some people eat deer (cute and quick) and duck (flying), but you're not going to be able to get McVenison or a Jumbo Quack down at the local fast food chain.  Our major staples are beef, pork, chicken, and turkey.  Animals we can easily catch and that won't put up much of a fight.  You don't "hunt" cows, you round 'em up and slaughter 'em.  You don't go on a turkey "hunt", you go on a turkey "shoot".  As in, "There he is, Gomer, plug 'im!"

Speaking of hunting, where do we get off calling that a "sport," anyway?  Let's look at deer hunting.  Now, I've got nothing against hunting per se, if you want to take your rifle and blow Bambi's head off, that's your business.  But when your opponent's entire defensive arsenal is "run like hell", that's not really a sport, now, is it?  Oh, it might LOOK like a sport, but it's like entering gold-medal decathlete Bryan Clay in the Special Olympics -- it's going to be a completely one-sided event.  You want to make hunting a sport?  How about hunting tigers with a Swiss Army knife or going after mountain lions with a billy club?  Give the animals a fighting chance.  Hell, that's a sport I'd shell out a few bucks for on pay-per-view.

Which brings us back to why we eat the slow, ugly, and flightless.  We're wimps.  We're not going to try to mass produce lion meat, because there's a pretty decent chance that we'll be the ones that get consumed in the process.  Maybe barbecued lion ribs would be out of this world, but it's just not worth the risk.  So we go after cows and pigs.  They're slow, ugly, and non-threatening. 

Hey, I'm not complaining.  I love steak and chicken, and I eat them as often as possible, just like the good Lord intended. I know the whackos at PETA get all out of joint with the "God's creatures are not food" argument, but as far as I'm concerned, if God didn't intend for us to chow down on cows and pigs, he wouldn't have made them so damn delicious.  I'm no theologian, but I've never heard scripture quoted to the effect of "thou shalt not partake of In-N-Out Double-Doubles."  In fact, the only clear statement God has ever made on what we should and shouldn't eat has to do with FRUIT.  The first time someone ate an apple, boom, humanity was screwed for all eternity.  And yet the produce section remains well-stocked.

So anyway, just out of morbid curiosity and the desire to see a rifle-totin' redneck get mauled to death, here's what I'm suggesting.  Let's expand our food choices.  For every deer that a hunter shoots, he must also attempt to bag three other "non-traditional" sources of meat.  Providing the consumer with more options will allow us to finally answer the one question that's on all of our minds:

Does yellow-billed continga really taste like chicken?

e