Terra Morgan

I've always loved animals. I had five cats growing up, got a dog when I was six, was obsessed with dinosaurs in preschool and horses in elementary school. I watched Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel (back when they played actual documentaries instead of Deadliest Catch) rather than Hannah Montana or The Lizzie McGuire Movie. I could tell you about different species of aquatic dinosaurs at age five, and describe the family lives of dolphins and elephants or extoll the benefits of the Fresian horse at age ten.

However, like most americans, I also ate animals. I saw nothing wrong with gasping at a doe seen while hiking but trying venison, with loving a lamb both on the table and at the petting zoo. I had never heard the word vegetarian until age five, when my mom took me on a camping trip with some friends of hers who had a daughter my age. They were all vegetarians - my new friend had, in fact, never eaten meat in her life - and I was shocked. You could go without eating meat? I had had no idea. I had known, of course, that meat came from animals, that they were dying for my meals, but that's not the kind of thing you generally think about at age five, when you eat what's given to you but complain about the green vegetables. And eating nothing but those vegetables? Potentially for your whole life? I liked my McDonald's chicken nuggets, thank you very much.

Then, only a few months later, my mom went from not eating red meat to being completely vegetarian (Well, mostly. Everyone I knew then who called themself a vegetarian ate seafood but not land animals, but I thought of that as normal vegetarianism until late in high school). If one of my parents was doing it, I decided that I really had no excuse. I told my mom that I wanted to be a vegetarian too.

Over the next few years, I gradually ate less and less seafood until, at age seven, I gave it up entirely, not wanting to cause the death of any animal unless it was absolutely necessary. At that point, I figured I was done. I was already stricter about my diet than anyone else I knew. I laughed at vegans for being extreme. After all, they didn't kill the animals to get milk or eggs, right?

Well, not necessarily. But they do enough awful things to them that, once I found out about said things, I couldn't in good conscience keep eating eggs and dairy. I went vegan a year ago last October, and I've never looked back.