Should We Be Eating Meat?

One afternoon last July, I was backing out of our driveway to go pick up my son, Holden, at camp when I heard a resounding crack under the car. It had just finished raining like mad, so I figured it was a large stick, but the sound was loud enough that I stuck my head out of the window to check. It was a turtle, and I had run it over in the worst way possible.

The tears came fast and furious, but I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing—I was already running slightly behind to get my boy. I called my husband, Nick, from the car—he didn’t answer, was on a work call. I called my sister, Emma, who, as usual, knew exactly what to say—immediately knew how much it must have meant to me. “You know,” she said, “once I killed a rabbit with my car.” I told her she was a horrible person.