America is loaded down with animal rights wackos – and “wackos” is the right word here. We’re not talking about people who are against dog fighting or believe that animals should be treated humanely, we’re talking about people who generally don’t seem to understand the difference between humans and animals. This is the mentality that led to a serious attempt to get Happy the Elephant declared a person in New York:

A yearslong legal attempt to get Happy, an elephant residing at the Bronx Zoo, transferred to an elephant sanctuary failed Tuesday when New York's highest court rejected a petition from the Nonhuman Rights Project.

The group filed a writ of habeas corpus on Happy's behalf, suggesting a legal instrument that has safeguarded the liberty of humans, by providing a means to secure release from illegal custody, should also apply to an elephant.

The New York Court of Appeals disagreed, though it said Happy was entitled to proper care.

It seems a bit odd to see a perfectly reasonable and sane ruling from a court in New York these days, but there you go.

We can appreciate animals, we can love animals, and we can want to make sure they’re not mistreated, but they’re definitely not on the same level as people. Someone needs to tell the people on my local NextDoor app that (not me, I try to avoid arguing with idiots), because there are quite a few of them, probably transplanted Yankees, that eternally seem to bemoan the fact that we’re encroaching on the territory of coyotes. As if coyotes aren’t opportunistic predators that wouldn’t happily eat your pets. Recently, I was visiting a friend in rural Idaho. As we drove around on a hill and looked at the piles of bones packs of coyotes had left every few feet, it was easy to understand why coyotes are shot on sight there.

Incidentally, some of those bones could have been her cats. She believes the coyotes have killed a couple of them. So, don’t weep for the coyotes that get shot.

Similarly, there are vegans who take their dietary preferences to an extreme. They push the idea that if you really care about animals like they do, you have to be vegan, just like them! If they want to just eat plants, that’s their prerogative. However, everyone should be aware that there is a raging debate about whether more animals die during the process of planting and harvesting crops than are outright killed for food. How can that be? Well, here’s diehard hunter Ted Nugent to explain:

"If you wanna be responsible for the most death possible, become a vegan. Because behind that tractor and that plough and that disc, unless you hide and deny it, are crows and seagulls following that tractor growing your tofu because the plough and the disc dismember and mutilate everything in those gazillion acres — every squirrel, every ground-nesting gopher, every ground-nesting bird, every snake, every turtle, every animal in that field that's turned into tofu is slaughtered by the gazillion."

He continued: "I'll never forget, this guy said, "Well, we're going to a vineyard to protest hunting.' And I go, 'Wait a second. Do you know the vineyard operator? Because I do. And you know what the vineyard operator does to protect those grapes? He kills everything — everything that sneaks in, everything that walks in, everything that flies in. The vineyard operator, to grow your wine, to protest hunting, kills everything that threatens those grapes, you jerk.'”

"My son's a vegan, my buddy Michael Lutz [of] BROWNSVILLE STATION, my co-producer, he's a vegan for health considerations, for digestive considerations," Nugent added. "That's perfectly legitimate. I'm not knocking veganism. But don't think for a minute that there's a reduction in animal deaths because you have a tofu salad. Just the opposite takes place. And denial is such a convenient lie. So, all you vegans, just keep eating your vegan salad because I love when you dismember all those animals and the crows, and the seagulls pick up on them as they're writhing in horror and being tortured so you can have a nice 'blood-free' salad."

Which side of the debate is right and which side is wrong? Which side has a bigger animal body count? I don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that if you’re eating commercially grown plant products, a lot of animals died to get that food on your plate.

Of course, it’s also worth noting that we use animals for a lot more than just food.