Books? No, I’ve got a backlog of three or four.
Magazines? No, such a waste; they mostly have no content. But the swimsuit issue got a quick glance.
Cosmetics? No. Clock radio, picture frames? No; no again.
No candy, wrapping paper, greeting cards, Hula-Hoops, green plastic army men, shaving cream, false
eyelashes, combs, brushes, or toothpaste. No, no, and no.
Ah . . . tools and lightbulbs and batteries. That was a spot where I could kill a little time; it was the second-to-
last aisle, and I sensed that my fifteen minutes wasn’t up yet. I parked myself there. There wasn’t a lot of heavy-
duty stuff, just the basics: tape measures, picture-hanging kits, all-purpose brown work gloves, black electrical
tape, and small hammers that looked more like toys for tapping tiny nails and not robust tools that carpenters
would need on the job.
Well, what is this up here? It was an unusual-looking item to be in the hardware aisle and on the top row
hanging above the prepackaged assorted household hardware—screws and nuts and washers.
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My impulse-buying urge kicked in again, but this time it wasn’t for selfish reasons. I wanted to do something
special for my golden retriever, Molly. She’s an especially nice dog, and I hadn’t gotten her a Christmas or
birthday present, so I thought that she would appreciate the pig-ear treatsthat night. I took the package off the
hook and examined it more closely. I was still quite amazed that a supplier of popular name-brand products and
pharmaceuticals stocked this item. I considered that perhaps pig ears were being marketed, becoming popular
for dogs the way Buffalo chicken wings have become for humans. At one time, poultry producers probably
ground up millions of chicken wings daily into fertilizer and animal feed, because what person would want to buy
and eat food that is mostly bone and fatty chicken skin with little or no nutrition? Now chicken wings, or wings, as
they are commonly referred to, are a staple appetizer on the menus of most commercial restaurant chains and
are practically synonymous with the Super Bowl, America’s biggest annual party. It’s quite imaginable that if
there were a wings shortage one year, the big game might be postponed until the wings supply could meet the
nation’s demand on Super Bowl Sunday. Perhaps gourmet pig ears were poised for a similar quantum leap, but
into the mainstream doggie world. Molly had loved the one I gave her once—she had gobbled it up.
Pig Ears (continued)
The label read “2 Gourmet Pig Ears.” They sure looked awfully real,
triangular and semitransparent, and I could actually make out thin veins
running through the tough-looking flesh and fine miniature hairs near the
ear tips.
How strange that a drugstore was selling real pig ears—near the
hardware, yet. But then I saw what was going on. The hardware blended in
with the pet supplies, and the pig ears and other edible items were the
beginning of the transition. As I turned my head to the right, I saw other
doggie chews and more traditional items such as the famous Nylabone
and rawhide twists. These items were also animal skins and by-products,
but unlike the anatomically correct pig ears, they were cleverly disguised
to appear to look more like toys, more like cartoon bones than actual
severed animal body parts that had been swept up from a slaughterhouse
floor.
