Chickening Out

So yesterday I butchered a chicken.

Actually, I cleaned a few chickens- I didn’t do any killing because it requires a firm hand and a steady stroke, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get all the way through the jugular quickly enough to prevent the chicken from too much pain.

Are you grossed out yet? I hope not.

I’ve been a vegetarian for about 9 years. And this week I ate a piece of chicken. It’s been an ongoing internal debate for months now- or possibly years- ever since I started spending time with people who raise chickens. And with chickens. And then started thinking to myself- well, why not, really? If my primary reason for not eating meat is that I disagree with the conventional method of raising and slaughtering animals, and here I have found a community of people who raise chickens in a sustainable, humane way, what are my reasons for not eating meat?

I really didn’t have any. I’ve never been much for the “its cute, so you can’t eat it,” sort of argument, because while animals are very cute and deserve to live long happy lives, there’s a line in there somewhere. Lions certainly aren’t contemplating whether or not the zebras are too cute to eat.

But clearly part of what makes us human is our ability to reason about things, sometimes endlessly. And so I decided that if I was going to eat a chicken, I wanted to meet the chicken. And I wanted to witness every aspect of its life, from birth to death, and let the chicken tell me if it was really ok. I spent hours with these chickens- held them, pet them, watched them run around in their outdoor pen, eating bugs and watermelons and grains. I found that chickens aren’t very talkative creatures.

When the time came to watch the chickens die, I was afraid I’d be grossed out. I was afraid I would throw up or something- and I was very afraid that I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. But my friend told me something very wise: no one has to be good at everything. And that includes killing. I’m very good at making clothes. He is not. He’s very good at raising and killing chickens. I’d probably be ok with the raising- but there is no reason for me to be ashamed that when it came down to it I didn’t actually cut their throats.

I did, however, clean the carcasses, pulling out guts with my bare hands, plucking the last few feathers, cutting off the feet and the head- oh yeah, I did all that. And all while standing around chit chatting with neighbors and friends from my co-op and their kids, who were fascinated by watching us pull out perfect little hearts and lungs and livers, and wanted to pick them up and feel them and see how they worked. At first it was weird- but within a few minutes we were comparing techniques and laughing and joking, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to stand there yanking on chicken guts.

However, when it finally came to eating a piece of chicken, I still hesitated- I was kind of afraid I just wouldn’t like it, and all of this would be for nothing. My friends roasted a chicken, and I sat down with four adults and two children. Having sat down at the “kids” end of the table, the adults sort of forgot that I was having a significant moment, and left me to my thoughts while I stared at the piece of chicken on my fork, wondering if it was the chicken I had sat and held for a good half hour a few weeks ago. The six year old next to me finally asked what I was doing. “I’m thinking about this chicken, and how it lived, and whether it had a good life, and thanking it for giving its life so I could eat it,” I said.

“Of course it had a good life,” she said, “I got to pet it.” She then proceeded to devour an entire chicken wing.

And so I ate the chicken. I like the dark meat better, by the way.