Used to be that the standard way of
buying grapes, which of course is by weight, was to get a certified
weight tag at a certified weight station; I'd weigh in with the truck
empty but all the harvest containers aboard, called "tare";
then I'd weigh back out with the truck full of grapes; obviously, the
difference between the two weights was the weight of the grapes, and
that determined what I owed the grower.
The certified station I then used most
was in Schellville, near Sonoma, and was no big deal; just a
truck-size flat scale inset in the ground in front of a modest shack.
The woman in the shack was Jackie, short, tough as nails, butch as it
comes, could throw any trucker out the door; I thought she was great,
and we got along very well. She was maybe in her 40's, still lived
with her father in a dubious compound across the intersection, where
they raised rabbits. She had many Polaroids (hopefully someone
remembers what they were) posted in back of her counter in the weigh
station, with bunny rabbits dressed up in little costumes as Santa
Claus, TV characters, and so on.
This brought up a question in my mind,
and after she'd weighed out the truck one day, I asked it.
"You know Jackie, you've got all
these really cute photographs up here of your bunny rabbits dressed
up in various costumes; but, then, you sell them for people to eat.
How do you put that all together?"
She frowned, definitely not happy I
asked, but still answered straight away: "Well, I dunno. One
day, they just stops looking like bunny rabbits, and starts looking
like dinner."
I don't think concise expression gets
much better; and I've never heard any definition of that fatal change
that's close to being as honest; although I recall the observation
that man is the only predator that lives in affectionate proximity to
his prey before eating it.
So I've admired her eloquence for
years; but one has to imagine the rabbits feel otherwise, when the
atmosphere in the hutch suddenly takes a mysterious turn for the
worse.