Lesson 1: To Kill a Chicken
We killed three chickens today. And came face-to-face with our utter disconnection from reality.
That is, what it takes to eat meat. We moved here with big ideas of self-sufficiency. I wanted to turn our backyard into a micro-farm. I had plans, and raising chickens was just the start. So far, there is not much in the way of food available, except for the eggs and a few struggling vegetables. We carried eight Australorp chicks home in a cardboard box, and soon discovered there were five hens and three roosters. Today was the day I decided to make it real and kill our own food.
I was concerned. It is very confronting to take a life, and aside from cockroaches and mosquitoes, I don’t think I’ve ever done it before. I was so nervous that I recruited four teenage boys. My sons and two of their friends. After all, they should know, they should have reverence, when they eat something that has died to give you life.
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The five of us paced around the chicken coop, uncertain. The teenagers brought a whole armoury, including axes, a Lord of the Rings sword and a Katana. None of us wanted to cause unnecessary suffering. I turned the first rooster upside down; it took some time, but finally it fell to sleep. I lay it down, neck stretched out, on a block of wood and held its feet while my son brought an axe down on its neck. I held its ankles through the death shudders as blood sprayed all over my legs. I managed to put each rooster to sleep. My other son and his friend killed the next two. And that is just the beginning of garden-to-table living.
There was blood and feathers and your hand reaching into the anus, sliding the membrane away to bring the guts out whole. Forget science class and dissecting a frozen frog, out came the entrails. Nothing was easy, because we had no idea and were bewildered as we encountered the ropes, bulges and ties; the soft machinery that was not so different from our own. Here is the liver, this is the tiny heart. And, Oh, don’t break that darker rope — for it is full of shit. Three bald carcasses lay on wooden planks. What have we here? Nothing like shop-bought. Where is the fat pale pink breast? These headless things are streaked with yellow, popped over with filmy goblets. Where are the juicy thighs? Those legs are long and lean. What are we to do with the bowl of internal meat? Delicate white globes, sweet red livers, and a gristly part, which I suppose was the stomach. Even the dog wouldn’t touch that. I felt I should bless the earth and bury the discards. Instead, not quite able to cope with it all, I threw them in the bin. What was I to do? What would a woman of yore do? She wouldn’t have needed four teenage boys to accompany her to the massacre. She would have identified her boy and dealt with him promptly. Dispatched him with the smooth, expert hands of a midwife surgeon. Pulling the sweet wobbly innermost parts. Then she would have seasoned and dressed the skin and stuffed its hollow with mixtures of homemade bread and foraged herbs. Not to mention the desert and vegetables that would accompany it to the family table. Everything would have felt worthy of prayers.
I, on the other hand, felt sad for my carcasses. I felt like I had insulted my cocks, those works of nature who were just beginnning to herald the morning, their black bodies lifted with silky green necks gleaming. Now the poor things lay naked on my kitchen bench top.
The journey could go no further. I stored them in icy water and showered for a long time. I threw my bloodied pants into the sink to soak and dressed in a long blue dress. Something clean, something that might look wholesome, no matter how inside I felt. And I am ashamed, I ordered pizza for dinner, not even vegetarian.
The cocks will not wake us tomorrow as they have for the last three mornings. This is not a happy feeling.
