A Bird In The Hand

Whenever I hear a vegetarian tell me they won’t eat meat because of the compassion they feel for the animals, I know this person has never lived with chickens. Chickens are dirty, stupid, horrid creatures that peck each other to death for inexplicable reasons. I know that chickens were put here to be food. They have a brain the size of a chickpea and I think they only use 10 percent of that! These animals only care about one thing, eating. They will eat anything, bugs, rotten vegetables, poop, and even other chickens. I doubt that the chickens that are all packed together in the chicken farm are feeling depressed at all. With a constant conveyor of food and water, they are as happy as a chicken can be. Remember, I am talking about animals that drown in the rain because they look up too long. I have watched chickens stand in the road and just stare at the oncoming cars as they run them down, they don’t even startle. Yes, chickens are meant to be eaten. However, I am not completely without compassion for them. Nor do I disrespect them. They have definitely left an imprint on my life.

When I was about 7 years old my father decided , much to my mothers dismay, that we would save big money and raise our own chickens, some to eat and some for the eggs. So he went to the local seed and feed store and brought home 80 of these adorable little fluffy chicks. For those who don’t know, chickens are adorable for all of about one week. As soon as that precious fluff falls off they immediately become ugly and start the pecking order. When the chicks were fully grown my dad built this interesting chicken coop with a wire enclosure for feeding and exercise. While chickens are too stupid not to drown in their water dish, if they work collectively they can escape every enclosure my father could come up with. After a few tries to contain them my dad just gave up and let the chickens free range around our yard. For a 7-year-old kid who’s entire summer was spent outside, having chickens everywhere, and their poop on everything wasn’t very fun.

Not long after the free ranging began, the chickens started causing quite a nuisance. They were hanging out in the road, getting into the garbage, crapping on everything within a 500 yard radius, making a tremendous noise, and dying in lots of interesting ways including, drowning in their water dish, being eaten by foxes, getting backed over by our car, and killing each other. Let me tell you, Chicken homicide is not a pretty sight, it takes days and days of bloody conflict involving most of the flock constantly pecking the head of one chicken. Chickens will chase you down if they think you have something to eat, and they are extremely dirty. By far the most disgusting part of having chickens is the rotten eggs. We had a hen that laid eggs and sat on them. That meant that they were fertilized and she wasn’t going to let us take them in the house for food. Well, she sat on them for far, far too long and one day she finally abandoned them. My six-year-old sister, Donna, and I were very curious as to what was in those eggs. So we plucked them out of the hen’s nest and threw them up against a tree. I don’t know what we were expecting, but someone should have warned us. I can still clearly hear the popping sound they made as they exploded against the tree trunk. My sister and I looked at each other and it only took just a few seconds before the smell invaded our souls. Mere words cannot describe this smell. It remains, to this day, the worst smell I have ever encountered. We screamed and ran into the house, and the smell followed us. It was the hottest most humid part of Michigan summer yet my mother quickly closed all the windows in the house as the smell was making us all retch. We couldn’t afford air conditioning in those days, and soon my mother’s sweating was too much for her and she instructed Donna and I to find the eggs and bury them. We did not want to. Crying and holding our noses we made our way back to the place where we had thrown them, only to find, to our complete disgust, that our beagle was trying to eat the putrid green slime that was once an egg. This was, for Donna and I, the epitome of vile. We screamed at our dog to stop, and chased it away with the shovel, only to have him dodge us and continue to try to eat the eggs. After about half an hour of sobbing, screaming, and dry heaving, finally we got the eggs buried. Not even five minutes had passed before our dog was digging them up again. I don’t think that stench totally dissipated for an entire month. It took twice as long for me to go near that dog again. Needless to say we never, ever, touched an egg that we weren’t positive was fresh.

Chickens are not totally devoid of entertainment value. Donna and I used to chase them and grab the slow ones by the tail feathers, which made them squawk and flail something fierce. We would toss them up into the trees, or on the roof of our house. It was funny to watch them try to get down. Sometimes we would try to teach them to fly by throwing them up as high as we could. Needless to say the chickens never learned to fly, and after a couple of them died on the roof from heat stroke, we stopped trying.

I think the last straw for my dad was the rooster who kept attacking my baby sister. She was two and this rooster just hated her and would attack her every time she came in the yard. After a particularly bad attack my dad caught the rooster and cut all its feathers off with scissors (I still don’t know how that was supposed to help). Sadly the chicken did not learn his lesson and after the next attack my dad finally killed it. Soon after the killing of the rooster, my parents decided it was time to be rid of the chickens. Together after some brainstorming they hatched a disturbing yet brilliant plan. They would invite everyone they knew to our home and then they would kill all the chickens, pluck them, gut them and fry them on a huge fire pit in our back yard. This plan they titled the “Chicken Killing Party”. I remember watching my dad draw up the invitations. He drew a cute cartoon of a chicken with big lips on its beak drinking a beer. I don’t know how many invitations my parents mailed out, but people turned out in droves for the party.

I remember the first time I saw my dad slaughter a chicken very clearly. I also remember that he thought his particular slaughter technique was quite clever. He hung the squawking animal from a clothesline upside down by its legs and clipped its head off with tree pruning shears. Then the animal would flail, as the blood would drain from its neck. My dad pointed out to me how this was very efficient as he could line up 4 or 5 chickens at a time and not have to chase them around the yard. Once the blood was drained from them, there was something involving a pot and steam, and then we would pluck out all the feathers. It is important to point out that my father is a man who has always been entertained by the horror of small children. Nothing is funnier to him than a child of about 6 totally consumed by fear. He delighted in startling us and making us scream. My dad worked second shift and occasionally we would get to stay up until midnight when he would come home. On some nights my dad would hide outside the window, and make tiny noises until one of the four kids would come to the window to investigate. As we strained out the window to see what was making noise he would then pop up into the window and growl like a monster sending us about ten feet into the air. This, to my father, was totally hysterical. We were plucking the feathers out of the dead chickens, when my dad called me over and he said, “come here, listen to this, get close” he then squeezed the dead headless chicken, and as the air passed through its neck it made that unmistakable “brwaaack” sound. I lost it, I thought it was still alive and I freaked out. I begged my dad to stop plucking it, told him it wasn’t dead and he was hurting it. My dad thought that was very funny. It took some convincing on my dad’s part to prove to me it was truly dead laughing throughout the explanation because of the look on my face. I failed to see the humor in it. That was the last time I helped with the plucking.

When the day of the Chicken Killing Party arrived, all of my parent’s family and friends started showing up around lunchtime. There was some heavy drinking and many chickens met their maker. I purposely stayed away from the “killing” part of the party. Once my curiosity got the best of me. I remember thinking as I watched my father and his friends slaughtering the chickens from across the yard, “this is really going to mess with me one day, I am just a kid, I don’t think I should be seeing this”. Right about when it started to get dark is where my memory gets foggy. I remember my great aunt was dancing on a picnic table, shouting out song requests for my dad to play on his guitar. I remember her in pantyhose. I do not remember a skirt or slacks. I remember my mother being very upset and complaining to her friends about something. I recall my dad picking up half cooked chicken parts off the ground and eating them. I remember being shuffled off to bed before I was tired.

The next morning my dad woke up very late when one of my mother’s cousins came to pick up all the feathers. Apparently he had some use for them, and there were lots of them. My dad walked out of his bedroom as he was trying to put on my mother’s shirt and once he got both of his arms in the sleeves it ripped up the back quite dramatically splitting the shirt into two complete halves. We all laughed, except my dad, I still don’t think he finds it very funny. I eventually ventured outside to view the carnage. I saw a huge mountain of feathers, a whole lot of trash, a smoldering fire pit and 4 chickens huddled in the coop. My parents had decided to keep four hens for the eggs. Out of some pity I guess, I decided to adopt one of them and I named it Penelope. I imagined that she would probably feel better having a name. By the act of naming her somehow she would know we wouldn’t eat her. I tried to comfort her imagining how she must feel having watched her entire family slaughtered and eaten by a bunch of half crazy drunk humans. “Don’t worry Penelope we won’t eat you, you’re a good chicken.” I think I cried a little.

Later that day my father told my mother that he needed to go to the hospital, he thought he was going to die. My mother assured him he wasn’t dying and told him to sleep it off. That was the last time I have ever seen my dad hung over. I think he quit drinking completely for a while. I really think he thought he might die. My mother always remembers this day fondly. For her it was a triumph over my dad’s drinking. She was rid of the chickens and one of my dad’s biggest vices in one fell swoop. She repeated the story many times in my father’s presence, rubbing just a little more guilt into his wounds each time it was related. While this event was disturbing and fascinating as a child, I feel mostly apathetic about the whole affair as an adult. I simply feel it is an interesting story, and something that makes me unique, for I know no one else who has had this experience, and it has shaped me just a little differently than everyone else.

For a couple more years, we put up with Penelope and her 3 companions. We fed them and in turn they gave us eggs. We still occasionally tossed them into trees, but for the most part the chickens and us kids led separate lives. Eventually, my parents tired of caring for them and gave them to our very needy neighbors about a quarter mile down the road. I told them which one was named Penelope in the hopes that she wouldn’t be eaten. However, she had stopped laying and lacking any other usefulness, I think that was her fate. She had led a relatively long life for a chicken, and she passed with at least a small legacy. She was not at all a good pet, but I appreciated her eggs, and, I feel sorry for all the times I threw her into the pine trees in the back yard. She does remain in my memory and I occasionally think of her. She wasn’t much of a hero, however she isn’t completely unsung. I don’t think a chicken could ask for much more. I hope the people who ate her enjoyed her. I am sure she was quite tough and gamey, but as I know these people had very little else to eat, she was a blessing to them. While I still believe that chickens are horrid and intended for consumption, it was years before I would eat chicken without some revulsion. Now I enjoy eating a well-prepared chicken. And, even though I can’t say I enjoy a chicken’s company, I will always eat them with a little compassion, appreciation, and a tiny pinch of pity.