Warning! This column contains scenes of graphic violence and death. Those of a nervous disposition should read no further.
“It was when we dropped the bodies in boiling water. The smell of them scolding made me feel faint.”
“I couldn’t get the stench of death off of my hands for two days. It made me retch whenever I tried to eat.”
“Their eyes just looking at you, even when their heads had been cut clean off. Whoa!”
Testimony from serial killers? Sort of. Chicken murderers to be precise.
The twelve weeks were up and for my small flock of white rock chickens it was time to meet their maker. Together with friends who had birds of their own, we had a chicken plucking party. Sounds harmless doesn’t it but plucking means killing and killing means neck breaking and head chopping but that’s not the worst. Then comes the dressing and I don’t mean choosing the right outfit for the event. They call it dressing to make it sound nice; when what it really means is cutting a hole in the chicken’s ass and ripping its innards out with your bare hands.
Thankfully, yes I say thankfully, yours truly was on killing duty. I’d wander around to the coop, talk gently to the assembled chickens waiting for my moment. The moment when one of the unsuspecting birds ventured close enough for me to scoop it up and carry it to its doom.
The flock soon became wary; their numbers slowly diminishing, their brethren being taken but never returning. Me? I became desensitised to the whole coax it, catch it, carry it, kill it routine. I actually started to enjoy it and that’s a little worrying. But I put my enjoyment down to the chickens and the dignity with which they went to their deaths.
I’d pick up an unsuspecting bird and pop it under my arm for the short walk to the chopping block. A few strokes of its back and the chicken would be clucking pleasantly. At the block, said chicken was swung upside down to be held by its feet. This was usually taken in the bird’s stride – a few chucks and a quizzical look upwards at me.
It was only when my fingers fastened around the chicken’s throat that it began to think something amiss and by that time it was way too late. A sharp jerk, some flapping and then a swift swing of the axe and the chicken was dispatched. Job done, for my part at any rate.
Then came the dirty part. Plucking: my companions went industrial on our chickens’ asses, quite literally. A dip in a vat of boiling water was followed by being tossed into what looks something like a spin dryer with dozens of rubber clad fingers fixed around the drum. The headless bird would whizz around, tumbling this way and that, as the fingers knocked off the feathers. Not a pretty sight but wholly idyllic compared to the job that fell to the third member of our murderous crew.
Yep, you guessed it, the hand up ass moment. Cutting a neat hole in the chicken’s backside – just big enough to insert a hand – was followed by a swift and brutal shove, grope, grip and yank. Out came all the bits you don’t see when you buy a pre-packed bird from the grocery store.
“Save the livers,” chimed the wife. “We gotta find ‘em first, what they hell do they look like?” barked back my companion, staring horrified at the insides of the first bird, which were now lying very definitely outside.
And so the day went on: coax, catch, carry, kill. Dunk, pluck, cut, grope, grip, yank. And repeat. And repeat and repeat and repeat… By the end of the massacre I had slaughtered around 30 chickens (I lost count at some point after 20 and at around the same time that bouts of hysterical laughter began to grip me!) and my compatriots had plucked, gutted, portioned and bagged them with an efficiency that would have you thinking we’d been murdering helpless hens for years.
The upshot of this is that I now have a stack of chickens in the freezer and my friends back in England
To them, I say: “The chicken tastes mighty fine and it’ll soon be time to do the same to the pigs, too!”
HOHOHAHAHAHAAAAAA!
Sorry. I slipped back into killin’ mode there for a moment.
Poor birds
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