So Many Birds
I’m back!
Painting, as many find, can be as dull as watching it dry. Though I do enjoy that it gives a person time to think, which is not always a blessing. After a few hours of meditation, I switched to an audiobook. I spent the better part of the week rolling topcoats onto walls while listening to a story so sensational it nearly caused me to fall off the ladder during the climax. I will have to collect thoughts on this soon, in another time and place.
By some miracle, I nearly finished my entire to-do list this week. To have done it all would have been a triumph I would have savored, but there are only so many hours in a day. I was even able to cross off a few things from my second list. One of the remaining items, I noticed, was strange:
“pigeons”
I have absolutely no idea what I meant by that.
This morning, after the house quieted down, I decided to do some road work. I went for a jog to clear my mind, which unfortunately meant my mind had more room to fixate on pigeons. I am terribly vexed. Were they a task? A term of endearment to remember? A story not to forget?
I was deep in this philosophical spiral when…
COCKADOODLEDOO!
I left my body.
Now, I scare easily. I prefer to think of myself as “alert,” but the truth is I can be startled by a strongly worded whisper. This rooster, whom I know full well exists, has taken years off my life.
He belongs to a perfectly respectable K–8 institution that, for reasons held by educational visionaries, maintains a small farm complete with goats, chickens, ducks, and a rotating gaggle of judgmental geese.
So many birds.
Which, naturally, brought me back to pigeons. And then, just as naturally, to chickens. In fact, just last weekend, on a short jaunt south to visit the Hundred Acre Wood, I heard a story about chickens. Someone was recounting their recent fiasco with butchering. It seems a troublesome few in the flock had met their end with the help of a device called a “dispatch cone”, a thing I had somehow made it this far in life without encountering.
A dispatch cone is essentially a metal funnel you fasten to a tree or post, into which you insert a chicken headfirst so that only its neck protrudes from the bottom. This keeps the bird contained, dignified if not entirely pleased, and prevents the operator from being battered senseless by wings, claws, and any deeply personal objections to the proceedings. It is, in short, a tidy, efficient solution to what was once a wildly unpredictable event.
What a great little invention.
Apparently it’s been around for at least a hundred years. Which means, of course, that my introduction to chicken butchering occurred before I or anyone I knew had the good sense to use one.
Mom’s old van lurched down the county road at a speed that suggested she was either late or eager to be rid of us, probably both. Outside, the summer sun beat down on hills so green they hurt your eyes, and trees blurred past like Nature herself was late for an appointment. When Mom yanked the wheel left into our destination’s driveway, the tires spat gravel with vehicular enthusiasm. “Thanks, again!” she hollered in the direction of the woman coming slowly up the hill toward the drive. We’d not be left to pester dad, and when Mom had things to do for the length of half a day or more, we’d sometimes be offloaded to family friends who lived so deep in the woods that even their mailbox needed a compass.
Our caretaker was trudging up the hill, and she and Mom conducted a conversation from a distance with gesticulations and one-word shouts. “Sundown!” Mom agreed, already backing away. I bent down to grab my bag, and when I stood up, there she was, arms outstretched like a welcoming statue at the gates of some unholy abattoir. Blood coated her forearms and spattered her sweat-drenched tank top in a way that makes a kid wonder if grown-ups have secret lives as serial killers. Too many treats when they were young, I suppose. The sticky redness glistened in the sunlight, looking exactly like the strawberry jam we’d can on occasion, except it most definitely wasn’t.
“Come on!” she called cheerfully. “It’s butchering day!”
This is not the sort of sentence that builds trust.
We followed her anyway, because children are tragically obedient in the worst possible moments.
She led us to a stump near the coop. We watched in horror as she grabbed a chicken by the legs, and, without ceremony, demonstrated the process. It involved an axe, several attempts, and a calm commentary about tendons that I have never emotionally recovered from. The chicken, once relieved of its head, did not lie down politely as I had assumed death required. Instead, it stood up.
And ran.
It chased my brother across the clearing with the determination of a creature that had nothing left to lose, which, technically, it didn’t.
“It’ll only be a minute,” she said. “They stop eventually.”
This did not comfort anyone.
Next came the plucking. Not so easy as it seems. If I could describe the strength needed from little hands to overcome weak wills and weak stomachs to pull the feathers out of a chicken… but you don’t need an education in that regard. When it’s your first fowl, it’s always a surprise that feathers resist.
We piled the little bodies up and carried the poor creatures to the fridge. Never the same again.
I doubt the chickens at the school will face this fate. They are, after all, educational chickens. They lay eggs, build character, and startle joggers. That rooster gets me every time. His presence is a bit incongruous in the wider urban neighborhood. Sadly, I’m reminded I won’t have to worry about him much longer. In fact, after running around like a chicken with my head cut off all week, I am ready to take a couple days to rest.
Just kidding!
I have two sleepless nights ahead of me for what I expect will be an unforgettable party.
Here we go.
I was 26 years old when I first learned that during the French Revolution, some doctors did informal experiments on freshly decapitated prisoners to uncover whether or not people remain alive, for even a minuscule amount of time, after the guillotine. They would call the person’s name or clap, and one account even claims that a man appeared to respond for several seconds after the event.
Well, after some half-hearted searching, it seems there isn’t much hard science to back this up. There is a difference between reflex and awareness. But neuroscientists estimate that residual awareness is possible from 1-3 seconds!
Can you imagine??