Kiss a Mink Goodby

As I understand it, a mink being raised for its pelt is kept in an enclosure equivalent to a miniature studio apartment with a swimming pool, and is pampered with a gourmet diet of beef, fish and sometimes even duck.

Nothing is overlooked in an effort to assure a mink’s every comfort, including the company of a mink of the opposite sex. An ambience conducive to, well, coupling is encouraged.

I’m not sure a tape of Frank Sinatra singing “The Way You Look Tonight” is piped in, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

When it comes time for the mink to undergo what the fur industry regards as stress-free euthanasia, as opposed to a capricious and often disquieting natural death, the mink is bade a cheerful goodby and led into an air-tight chamber filled with carbon monoxide gas.

There, in a matter of seconds, he slips into what the Bible calls “a little folding of the hands to sleep” and appears next in an arena of haute couture he never could have achieved on his own.

We don’t know that a mink is happier that way, adorning a woman’s body in the hereafter, but we strongly suspect he is. Even Catholics don’t get that good a deal when they go trudging beyond the pearly gates.

What better than a life of sex, duck and your own swimming pool, followed by an eternity spent as a pelt in the finest circles of human society?

It makes death sound like fun.

The reason I am writing about the Life and Afterlife of a Mink in such enthusiastic terms is due to a visit by Bill Outlaw, director of media relations for the Fur Information Council of America, and Tim Sullivan, communications manager for the FurFarm Animal Welfare Coalition.

They blew into L.A. as part of the fur industry’s counterattack against those animal activists who would see them in hell, or, at the very least, badly mauled by an enraged and vengeful Charlie Chinchilla.

Tim is an intense, slight young man with black-rimmed glasses and a buttoned-down demeanor, while Bill is as sweet and persuasive as honey in bourbon, a manner, one suspects, due primarily to his past role as a political strategist in the Deep South.

To quote a friend from Georgia, “They ain’t nothin’ mo’ nicer than a good ol’ boy what wants somethin’.”

Bill and Tim came equipped with enough pamphlets, clippings and press releases to choke a, well, horse, with titles like “Seven Reasons to Feel Good About Fur” and “The Animal Rights War on Medicine.”

It is their contention that organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals don’t give a rat’s rear end about the actual treatment of animals, they just want to end what Tim calls “animal usage.”

That includes their usage, I mean their use, in food, clothing and medical research. No more fur coats, leather shoes, wool sweaters, cheeseburgers, honey-baked hams, coq de bruyere or monkeys with electrodes stuck in their brains.

I don’t know about silk blouses. No one seems to be raising hell about the abuse of worms.

It didn’t bother me that Tim and Bill did their little song and dance about the rights of old ladies to wear fur coats if they want to, or for truck drivers to eat them a good steak if the hunger takes them.

To begin with, I have no doubt other animals would be eating and wearing us if God had given them the brains and size to do so.

The shark, for instance, never hesitates to dine on surfer sushi whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Furthermore, those who would have us run naked through the forest with coyotes and cat squirrels, surviving on roots and nuts, have had their day in the media. They’re experts at it.

Not only have they won attention through vandalism and intimidation, but they’ve also enlisted the best minds in America to support their cause. Bo Derek, Dan Aykroyd, Ali MacGraw, Willard Scott . . . people like that.

We are quite obviously in the cross-fire of a war that is heating up even as I write.

On one side are skinny, wild-eyed vegetarians screaming that we are the butchers of Bambi, Brer Fox and Baloo the Bear.

On the other are drooling, greasy-jawed carnivores with brains the size of a robin’s egg who consider a Big Mac Attack the secular equivalent of a spiritual epiphany.

Us normal people are under siege by true believers from every quarter, and I don’t agree with any of them anymore.

I don’t intend on killing Dumbo or Namu the whale, but if I’m freezing to death and a fur-bearing animal struts by, you can kiss it goodby.

God never intended me to be cold while Minnie the Mink is around.