Aaron Kenter

I still need to write about Berlin, Paris, and the farm we are currently staying at, but I have something to write about now as it is currently fresh in my mind. Today I witnessed the killing of a rooster. Now this may not seem interesting to some of you, I don’t know, but for me this was the first time I experienced the killing of an animal. If you are feeling squeamish you might not want to continue.

First, I will spend a few lines getting you up to speed on the situation. We are currently in Normandy on a farm near the town of Vire. The farm sits on 27 beautiful acres that encompass a, more or less, miniature river valley. Rather than a river, though, there are many fresh water springs which feed a creek that runs through the farm. A dam of earth was created at one section of the creek in order to create a fish pond which is approximately 40 by 20 yards. On the farm there are two pigs, eight ducks, ten rabbits, 25 chickens, six cats, a dog, and I would say 1,000 fish. In short, it is a very nice place.

Now back to the story. Along with growing a good portion of their vegetables, the English ex-pat couple that we are helping raises most of their meat too. Their freezer was nearly out of chicken earlier today and so it was time for one of the chickens to be slaughtered. Earlier in the week, Jenny chose the older rooster (he was nine and a half months old) to be killed. I and another helper volunteered to help her out when she said that she was going to slaughter the chicken. I did not like the idea of watching something die, but I felt that it was something I should do given how many chickens I have consumed so far in my life and how many more I will eat in the future.

The rooster had been locked in a cage earlier that morning so that Jenny could catch him easily when the time came. On this farm all the chickens run free throughout the yard and so, if one tried hard to get away, it would be a real difficult thing to catch it. Jenny pulled the chicken out of the cage and walked him up to a wood block with a hatchet next to it. She made odd comments in the process (to the effect of “time to die chicken” and “any last words?”) which in the moment I mistakenly took for heartlessness but soon realized was actually a psychological defense mechanism. A sort of de-anthropomorphizing I suppose.

Jenny put the rooster on the wood block and raised the hatchet. Not sharpened as well as it could be, the hatchet did not do the job on the first whack. A second whack was quickly administered. I would say that the rooster did not die on the first whack though Jenny said that it did. Whatever the case may be, the second severed the spinal chord and this (for reasons I don’t quite understand though I will look it up) caused the rooster’s body to flail about; yet, it did not take his head off and so he did all this flailing and running around with his head dangling. This stopped after only a few moments and Jenny picked him up and finished taking the head off.

The killing was gruesome. There was a brief moment in between the first and final hatchet whacks where I seriously considered becoming a vegetarian, though that feeling did not last.

The head was put in a plastic bucket and then the rooster’s body was hung up by its legs. Blood poured out of the neck for a second or two and then became a trickle as Jenny began plucking the feathers. The other helper and I joined in. The plucking was awful and fascinating at the same time. It was surreal. Not five minutes before the rooster had been cockle-doodle dooing and now its head was in a plastic bucket being slowly covered by the feathers we were pulling out of its still warm body. And yet, as the feathers piled up and covered the head, the nearly featherless body looked less like something that could run around the yard and more like food.

Jenny untied the body and we went into the house. The body was then soaked in hot water to make it easier to pull out the last few feathers that were deeply rooted. While the other helper and I were getting out the last of the feathers, Jenny broke off the legs at the knee. She did this by bending them the opposite way until the ligaments broke and then she used a knife to cut through what was left. This accomplished, the body was taken out and paid on the table. A cut was made in the back end and Jenny began pulling out the rooster’s insides. First came the intestines and here I will say that, though the macabre feeling had not yet left, I felt more like I was watching a science experiment than the gutting of something that was alive 20 minutes prior. In the intestines you could see food that was partially digested. The gizzard came out next and is, more or less, the chicken equivalent of a stomach. Jenny cut it open to show us the inside. It was full of grass, grain and grit (which is sand and dirt and helps the chicken digest). The liver and heart came out next. Jenny cut open a part of the liver to show us what the toxins the liver had taken out of the food looked like. Green liquid is what it looked like. The lung (chickens only have one) and windpipe came out last.

The body, which now looked exactly like something you could find in a grocery store, was brought back to the sink where the emptied out inside was washed so as to remove the last few bloody bits. The cleaning completed, Jenny put the chicken in a plastic bag and then put that in the freezer.

It was a gruesome experience but I am glad that I had it. Seeing how your food gets to your plate is a good thing. That being said, it was no fun at all. The whole thing was fascinating but none of it was enjoyable. But that is how some things are.

It would be impractical for every person to kill the chicken he eats, but I do think that if a man is going to eat a chicken he should at the very least be willing to do the dirty work involved; be willing to be a part of the killing that is required for his meal.