Editor's Note: Gone to the Dogs

by Brian K. Mahoney, February 24, 2010

Davey McGahee,the protagonist in T. C. Boyle’s redemption farce “Miracle at Ballinspittle,” is a down-at-the-heels everyman. A New York City construction worker, McGahee and a friend decide, on a drunken whim, to visit a religious shrine in Ireland where a 15-year-old girl supposedly had witnessed the statue of the Virgin Mary move.

When McGahee arrives at the holy site, much to his surprise (and to those around him), the statue denounces him as a sinner, and reveals a shocking vision of all the food he’d ever eaten: “surrounded by forlornly mooing herds of cattle, sad-eyed pigs and sheep, funereal geese and clucking ducks, a spill of scuttling crabs and the claw-waving lobsters, even the odd dog or two he’d inadvertently wolfed down in Tijuana burritos and Cantonese stir-fry, truckloads of potatoes, onions, avocados, half-eaten burgers, and fork-scattered peas, the whole slithering wasteful cornucopia of his secret and public devouring.”

Boyle’s satire of human appetite is over-the-top to be sure, but poses a searing question to those of us who eat animals. As the narrator in “Ballinspittle” plaintively asks, “Who hasn’t laid to rest whole herds to feed his greedy gullet?” If I were to put myself in place of McGahee, how many cows would I face? How many truckloads of pigs? Which schools of fish and in what profusion? How many geese, ducks, and chickens would eye me balefully? The scene is a horror to contemplate.

I was reminded of Boyle’s story by a number of e-mails I received this month. A couple were from animal refuge/rescue operators, seeking publicity for their tireless advocacy for nonhumans. These are fine organizations—Catskill Animal Sanctuary in Saugerties, which recently rescued 41 chickens from a meth lab in Kansas; Pets Alive in Middletown, which has opened a food pantry for animal owners that can’t afford pet food—and I look forward to documenting their achievements in an upcoming issue.

Brian Shapiro, executive director of the Ulster County SPCA, had also called me, hoping we would help promote the SPCA’s annual benefit gala, the aptly named Fur Ball, on March 6 at the Kingston Holiday Inn. (For information: 845-331-5377x211.) By the time you read this, however, the Fur Ball is most likely either sold out or already past. If you want to spend a night out for a great cause, the SPCA is holding another fundraiser at Unison in New Paltz on April 23, “The Best of Friends,” an evening of stories, poems, and reminiscences about the relationship between people and dogs, presented by the Mohonk Mountain Stage Company and Snakeland Players.

I admire the heck out of Shapiro, whom we profiled in these pages two years ago shortly after he took over as head of the UCSPCA. A vegan, Shapiro is deeply committed to the cause of animal rights without being righteous or proselytizing. The man just wants to get animals adopted into good homes; if you want to talk about the best way to cook tofu, well he can do that, too.