My hate of animals has made me a vegetarian

I have never been a big meat-eater, particularly meats that resemble the actual animal, like joints with bones.  A thick slice of bloody beef amongst my roast potatoes and carrots literally turns my stomach.  I would find it just as appetising to walk up to a mooing muddy cow standing on the hillside and bite a chunk out of its side.

My dislike of eating animals isn't because I have any deep affection for them. It’s actually the opposite. I would rather eat food that hasn't scratched or bitten me, or chased me, or barked loudly at me, or broken my leg.  Vegetables are much safer by comparison.

And in the wake of the whole cockerel killer-attack incident, I have now gone from avoiding animals to positively disliking them, particularly poultry - I do not want them anywhere near me (certainly not inside me), dead or alive.

This leaves a bit of a problem, because although we promptly got rid of vicious 'Cocky' (affectionately renamed by Betty when she realised 'Buttercup', her cute fluffy yellow chick, turned out to be a he) we still have four hens left, all of which the other Buttons totally adore.  In my rational head I know that they won't attack me, but they still terrify me, so much so that I tried to take one of them on with my crutch the other day when she pecked at some grass a little too close to where I was standing frozen to the spot.

I later announced that I wanted to move back to London, and my mum told me: 'Your poor children, not having a hardy countryside-loving woman for a mother.'

In light of my chicken aversion, I did wonder whether Pinterest were having a cruel laugh at my expense recently when they sent me an email entitled: 'Mouth-watering chicken recipes'.  UK pinners might be 'cluckers for chicken recipes' but this one ain't.  I am actually thrilled that I now genuinely dislike the taste of chicken - it feels like sweet revenge.

Interestingly, the leg breakage incident has also forced Betty into announcing that she too is now a vegetarian.  But for her it's on the grounds that she feels 'so so sorry for cute lovely animals who are killed and then eaten.'

She blatantly doesn't believe that her cockerel is now living happily on a farm somewhere, and she still eyes me suspiciously while saying 'I would be heartbroken if I ever found out that Cocky was dead.'

A small part of me feels bad that I got the next door neighbour to kill and eat Betty's pet, particularly when she makes me listen to tortured love songs she has written for him.  But then I remember that I am still hobbling around on crutches, I can't drive, it takes me three hours to make lunch, my house is a mess, and I have put on about three stone... and all because of him.

So Betty and I will continue to reject meat for our opposing reasons, but one thing we do agree on is that our vegetarianism sort of excludes pigs, because as Betty pointed out 'they just taste too nice.'