I don't know if we are going to start seeing TV commercials with people with brown milk mustaches, but the folks who created the great "Got Milk?" campaign are going to start pushing chocolate milk.

The dairy industry wants more kids to drink milk and thinks by pushing flavored milk, like chocolate, more kids will drink it. The pro-milk forces believe drinking chocolate milk is better than drinking no milk at all.

This makes perfect sense to me. I know people who hate to drink vodka. The only way they can choke it down and get all of the vital nutrients in vodka is to mix it with Kahlua or orange juice. And other people I know won't drink fresh-squeezed rum unless it is spiked with Coca-Cola.

But the anti-chocolate milk forces (including the misguided radical group, People for the Ethical Treatment of How Now Brown Cows) think encouraging kids to drink chocolate milk is like pushing sugary soft drinks and candy as snacks. You know where that leads. A kid starts off drinking chocolate milk, pretty soon he's chugging caffeine-laden Mountain Dew, then he goes on to marijuana and ultimately crack cocaine. How long before there are crack cocaine machines on elementary school campuses?

There are people who don't think kids should drink any milk at all. Everyone knows that cows emit, well, let's just say "noxious vapors" from their various orifices. And they do it a lot. These vapors are doing something weird to the ozone, I believe, or maybe polar bears. Although how American cow vapors can bother Arctic polar bears, I don't know. They think kids who drink milk are basically evil eco-terrorists out to kill the earth.

I don't think milk-drinking children are eco-terrorists, at least most of them. My only problem with the milk you get at supermarkets is that it comes only from cows. Why is cow milk the only udder fluid of choice?

There is something called "soy milk" sold in a few stores, but I'm not sure what kind of creature a "soy" is. Perhaps a South American rodent of some sort. And you occasionally come across goat milk, but it's nasty stuff. Goat milk tastes like cow milk that has been strained through a dirty gym sock.

All animals make milk, and I bet some of it is tasty. I hear hamster milk, for instance, is delicious. Yes, it's a bit harder to milk a hamster, but the effort is worth it. And you don't have as much financial overhead as raising cows. You can have an entire hamster dairy farm on about 800 square feet of property.

If you want your kids to grow up big and strong (especially big), maybe they should try elephant milk. Or rhino milk. I have no idea what milk from an elephant or rhino would taste like, but talk about strong bones! Or maybe you've got a future track star on your hands. Why not boost his chances by rearing him on cheetah milk? Cheetah are the fastest animals on the planet. It would be fun to see someone try to milk a cheetah. He better have his Nikes on.

Of course, the most natural milk for humans to drink is human milk. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals actually asked Ben & Jerry's to make their famous ice cream out of human breast milk. Ben & Jerry's passed, mainly because marketing tests showed the public wasn't ready for "Mommy Mint Mocha" ice cream. Some people have proposed large human milk-producing facilities. Of course, only women would supply the milk, and the people proposing that are all men.

Can you say, "Got lawsuit?"