Doug Clark: Prove your love of meat and win…

The protein-deficient crazies of PETA have challenged me to take part in World Vegetarian Week.

And take part I will.

By giving away MEAT!

Listen up, fellow carnivores. Call me at (509) 995-6243 (leave a message) or e-mail me at dougc@spokesman.com.

The lucky duck who convinces me that he or she loves meat as much as I do will win …

Free lunch Wednesday with yours truly at a savory Longhorn Barbecue.

Come with me and eat your fill of ribs, chicken, beef, ham, sausage – whatever you want.

Plus I’ll have a “special” gift for you.

But wait, there’s more.

The top three meat-loving runners-up will each win a certificate worth 20 bucks at any Rosauer’s Supermarket butcher shop.

Sorry to sound so roughage. But I didn’t start this war.

I’m a graze-and-let-graze kind of guy.

If human beings want to wear hemp loincloths while chewing alfalfa into a cud-like paste with a herd of Holsteins, well, who am I to judge?

If people want to gobble fake-and-bake Tofurky for Thanksgiving, so be it.

But these PETA piranhas always have an agenda.

And they won’t rest until they’ve rammed their lentil lifestyle down every one of our chicken pot pie-holes.

Take the e-mail I received from a PETA Campaigns Media Coordinator.

“Dear Doug,” Sarah Leimert wrote as if we were a couple of chummy old sorority sisters.

“… From May 19 to 25, people around the world will be giving plant-based diets a try - and saving animals’ lives, helping the environment, and improving their health all at the same time.”

How smug can you get?

“We hope that you’ll join them (and of course, share your experience with your readers).”

When I read those words, there was only one thing for me to do:

Stage a pro-meat counterattack.

Leimert, in another section of her e-mail, recapped “the advantages of the vegetarian lifestyle.” Out of fairness, I will air a few of her points along with Clarkian cutlets of common sense:

PETA: “Every vegetarian saves the lives of more than 100 animals per year.”

CLARK: The animals wouldn’t be dying at all if they weren’t so darned cute and tasty.

PETA: “It’s nearly impossible to be eco-friendly if meat is part of your diet.”

CLARK: It’s completely impossible to be friendly when you belong to a wacked-out organization that once came to Spokane and set up an exhibit that compared the poultry industry to Hitler’s Holocaust.

PETA: “A vegetarian diet is great for your health.”

CLARK: In the immortal words of Groucho Marx: “I’m not a vegetarian, but I eat animals who are.”

But maybe I’m missing something. To demonstrate my open-mindedness, I drove to Huckleberry’s Natural Market Monday morning and purchased a couple of PETA-approved edibles:

A box of MorningStar Farms veggie bacon strips. A box of Gardenburger “Classic” soy patties.

Then I took them home and attempted to choke them down for lunch.

It wasn’t easy. The brown, granular burger looked like it had been deposited by a vagabond mutt.

Once heated, it emitted a peculiar, semi-burned mealy odor that made me think of the time I toured a rendering plant.

I took a bite.

I’d rather suck on a damp ferret.

The bacon strips were even weirder. They had these artificial pink-and-white veins that made them look like plastic props in a kid’s cooking play set.

Except that a plastic prop would have tasted better.

The Donner Party wouldn’t have touched them.

If eating meat is so bad, why do so many of these vegetarian food products try to emulate it?

Oh, baby. I need a Longhorn fix.