I intend to convince the flytrap . . . to become a vegetarian. : Editors & Others for Earthworms

I am under fire for satirizing a protest by students at Van Nuys High School against dissecting frogs and earthworms in their science classes.

I suggested that it was probably better for the kids to be cutting up frogs than to be cutting up teachers, which got me a lot of flak from animal activists, but not a word on behalf of teachers.

One person wrote that kids who start out chopping up earthworms will someday crave larger game, which I presume means they will want to attack elephants on the Serengeti Plain.

Another said that, by condoning the dissection of earthworms in high school, I was encouraging the vivisection of dogs in college by young people who, thus desensitized, would grow up to be Oh my God! surgeons!

The others, as I understand it, become either registered nurses or serial killers.

Someone else sent an essay from the magazine New Woman, which departed from stories on how to make love in the kitchen long enough to inform me that a dog was once crucified in order to study the duration of Christ’s agony.

I don’t know what to say about that, because I will end up either anti-dog or anti-Christ. I just hope it was a union carpenter who did the job. I want no trouble with the International Brotherhood.

In that same general category, I was sent material that suggested I was probably in favor of babies’ undergoing surgery without anesthesia. I’m not sure how we got from earthworm-bashing to baby-cruelty, but I presume it’s just another syllogistic stop on the road to Serengeti.

To nevertheless clarify my position, I like babies very much, but I simply do not have the capacity to cuddle an earthworm.

The response from animal lovers has been so intense, I even caught hell for something I didn’t write. The article in question concerned toads whose eyes were cut out by two Cal State biologists in order to learn if blind toads could make their way back to a pond. The biologists were happy to report that they could.

I’m not sure what the scientific purpose of the experiment was, other than to assure us that, in the event of a cataclysm of such magnitude to cause every toad in the world to go blind, they will still be able to find their way home. Small comfort, I’d say.

One telephone caller, a man, said that being forced to kill a frog in high school was so traumatic that he became a vegetarian.

“I will never,” he said in self-righteous indignation, “eat anything that has once been alive.”

“What about broccoli?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, broccoli once lived and knew love and felt the warmth of . . . . “

He called me the rear end of one of his favorite animals and hung up.

Someone else, in order to emphasize the mass slaughter I encourage by mocking the death of earthworms, sent me a pamphlet that says 4 billion birds and 100 million cows, pigs and sheep are killed every year in the United States for food.

It goes on to say that in a 70-year lifetime, an average American eats two sheep, 12 cows, 29 pigs, 984 chickens, one calf, 37 turkeys and 910 pounds of fish.

“All told,” the pamphlet adds with appropriate horror, “the above figures represent a line of animals stretching over 750,000 miles--far greater than to the moon and back.”

Well, hell.

I don’t condone cruelty to animals, and I doubt very much that I will have personally eaten 12 cows and 984 chickens by the time I turn 70.

In fact, I like little creatures. My wife donates regularly to Actors and Others for Animals, and I encourage the contribution. Not only does it help the animals, but it’s something that actors can understand.

We ourselves are animal people. At this very moment, we own a goat, two dogs, two fish, two cats and a bird, none of which I have the slightest inclination of dissecting or eating. Seriously.

Well, yes, we also own a Venus’ flytrap, and that does involve a certain cruelty to flies, but now that my consciousness has been raised, I intend to convince the flytrap, which my son calls Ollie, to become a vegetarian.

I’m not sure if vegetarianism by a flytrap constitutes a form of cannibalism, but I can’t allow cultural considerations to get in the way. Flies have already suffered enough.

Thanks to all of you who have written and telephoned and spat at me from passing cars, I am a changed man. No longer will I mock the efforts of those engaged in saving animals, most particularly the earthworm.

We have organized Editors and Others for Earthworms and are asking you to send meaningful earthworm stories, preferably in a tragic vein, in order to facilitate the national campaign to stop their slaughter.

You can also join by practicing self-restraint. The next time you find little Lumbricus ogligochaeta sniffing around your BLT, remember the Serengeti syndrome. Today the earthworm, tomorrow the elephant.

And be careful of all those blind toads crawling back to the pond.