2009-12-07
Explanation
In this two-panel comic, a woman in the first panel tells a man: "I'm a vegetarian, sir, because I don't need to murder to eat." The second panel, captioned "Somewhere... on a soybean farm...," shows a group of terrified mice fleeing from approaching tractors, crying out "Run! Tractors!" "Where's Mama?!" and "I don't know! Just run!"
The comic makes the point that vegetarianism, while often motivated by a desire to avoid animal harm, does not actually eliminate animal deaths from the food production process. Large-scale agriculture -- including soybean farming, a staple crop associated with vegetarian diets -- involves heavy machinery that inevitably kills small animals like mice, rabbits, and other field-dwelling creatures during planting and harvesting. By anthropomorphizing the mice and giving them a dramatic disaster-movie scene, the comic highlights this often-overlooked consequence in a darkly funny way.
The votey panel shows the woman crying out: "I'm a vegetarian! You can't send me hatemail!" This is a meta-joke acknowledging that this comic is likely to generate angry responses from vegetarians, while also poking fun at the idea that one's dietary choices should shield them from criticism.