Sienna Tackles Strawberries
“Mommy doesn’t it hurt them?”
“No hon, it’s just something they grow to make new strawberries.”
“I don’t want to eat them.”
“Come on Sienna, finish your breakfast.”
“No mommy, it makes me sad, like I hurt them.”
“Strawberries don’t get hurt. They’re plants, Sienna.”
“How do you know they don’t get hurt?”
“They don’t have feelings, honey, they’re plants. Can you just eat three — for me, so we can go?”
“But you and daddy say we can’t eat fish but Uncle Jack says fish don’t have feelings.”
“Uncle Jack is wrong. Fish have feelings just like you and me. Killing them — Sienna, fish have brains, just like you and me, so they feel hurt and scared like you and me. That’s why we don’t eat them.”
“How do you know strawberries don’t feel hurt and scared. Yesterday I saw the squash open the flowers when the sun came out. Maybe that means it’s happy.”
“That just means it wants sun to grow.”
“How do you know that’s all?”
“I just do.”
“You didn’t learn it?”
“Of course I learned it. That’s why we need to go to school.”
“How did the teacher know then?”
“Because they do science to know this stuff.”
“They try to hurt strawberries?”
“No, they –– Sienna, are you going to eat your strawberries?”
“No, you hurt them.”
“I did not. They want us to take the fruits. Sienna, strawberry plants don’t have brains.”
“You don’t know that mommy.”
“Yes, I do Sienna.”
“No you don’t!”
“Honey, I know that just like I know you don’t have a tail.”
“Yes I do. Right here.”
“That’s your arm.”
“See? It’s a tail.”
“You can’t wave it behind you and make it a tail. It’s still your arm.”
“Why do you get to decide? I want it to be my tail. I use it as a tail. To you it’s an arm, to me it’s a tail.”
“Okay, we need to go. You can be hungry today. They don’t have feelings, Sienna. You can eat them.”
“Then why do you say they when you talk about them?”
[Caleb Garling is a writer in San Francisco and the author of The St George’s Angling Club, a novel about the outdoors.]
