Fruits and vegetables.

All I could hear was the sound of my breath echoing inside the towering carrot costume. I was led past the school bus through a throng of Des Moines police officers, angry parents, troubled teachers, and renegade students trying to give me a high five. The only thing missing was a riot squad with fire hoses, and for all I knew, one was hiding in the bushes.

I recalled a friend's joke that my getup should've come equipped with a bulletproof vest, but as it turned out, polyester was tough enough to deflect the ammunition deployed by overalls-clad members of the Iowa Pork Producers Associates: sticky slices of bologna and pimento loaf.

Welcome to the tumultuous tour of Chris P. Carrot, a pro-vegetarian mascot whose mission was to give away buttons and leaflets outside cattle-country elementary schools. With my big feet in his clunky white shoes, Chris P. stood over seven feet tall. He had a wide smile and cartoonlike eyes, a fountain of greenery sprouting from his head, and a pair of flamecolor tights--which, sadly, wouldn't stretch to the top of my lanky legs, leaving me to constantly yank them up. The animated carrot's arrival prompted TV crews to do live remotes from school cafeterias, interviewing opinionated cooks, stage-struck students, and concerned parents: "Kids shouldn't talk to strangers," said one Omaha mom. "Even if the stranger is a vegetable."

Through the carrot's dark mesh eyehole, I saw myself in the faces of the bewildered children. As a young carnivore, I never imagined growing up to be a veggie vigilante. I was such a meat enthusiast that my father, Ray, a former chicken-truck driver who opened a diner, named the "Danny Dog" on the kiddie menu in my honor. Like most suburban American tykes, I held the illusion that meat had nothing much to do with animals but instead grew in a "hamburger patch," as the omni-present McDonald's ads insisted.

My journey to becoming a costumed crusader began in the ninth grade, when I was punched by one of the bullies who somehow knew I was gay before I did. They hollered "Fag!" and one slugged me in the stomach, sending me tumbling over. Stunned, I looked up to see a surreal collection of chuckling faces as I lay gasping for breath, wondering who had lashed out at me and why.

A few months later I was on a fishing trip with my dad and his Rotary Club pals when my beginner's rod bent over like a horseshoe. Excited, I reeled in my catch--only to discover I'd hooked a big, ugly flounder. "You got a booby prize!" someone joked as he stomped the flailing fish to the deck with his boot and tore the hook out, causing blood to pulsate from the panicked creature's mouth.

I grew uneasy, suddenly considering what the scene looked like from the flounder's point of view. Strained, he was looking up to see a surreal collection of chuckling faces as he lay gasping for breath--and in that instant I felt like I'd become one of the terrorizing bullies I dreaded so much in school. Most people are sensitized to the plight of animals by cute, cuddly four-legged balls fur--I sympathized with a rubbery bottom-feeder. I never ate fish again, and I soon stopped eating anything else with eyes (except for potatoes).

I eagerly shared my newfound sentiments with anyone who would listen, assuming that everybody would instantly grasp the noble logic of extending the stone respect to fish, chickens, and cows that they do to dogs and cats. Although I won a few converts among my preteen peers, most grown-ups reacted as if I were advocating rights for pet rocks: They didn't debate as much as ridicule me for proposing such a silly idea. My sense of isolation was soon compounded by the realization that, just as the kids at school so often reminded me, I was gay.

In the mid '70s, I felt relieved to see on the news that there were other gays in the world: One of them had thrown a pie at Anita Bryant. If only somebody would throw a pie at Ronald McDonald, I reasoned, everything would be fine.

That attitude propelled me to form an animal rights group in college, take a job with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as soon as I graduated, and circle the globe organizing provocative protests--such as parading around schools dressed as a carrot. I guess you could say I've courted hostility for being both a fruit and a vegetable.

Mathews is a director of PETA.