serial killer

i have become a serial killer. last saturday i cut ten throats and was an accomplice in many other murders, holding the victim down so my associate could perform the dirty deed. one hundred innocent victims gave up their lives that day...

so, to put another spin on things: on saturday we were butchering chickens to prepare for the fbs youth camp. apparantly it's cheaper to do these things yourself. so that morning, a truck pulled up and delivered 100 feathery white birds to our yard. so then the gang of about 10 fbs members and salters swung into action: butchering, plucking, gutting, packaging.

at first i went to work plucking, which definitely has a high learning curve. my first bird took me about 45 minutes but then after that i was just cranking them out. these things get easier with practice. the same goes for butchering. it was a huge step to hold a chicken's feet and wings while its neck was severed. the spasms that run through the body after it's killed can be pretty violent. but as the day wore on, i grew used to it, running them down and capturing them.

i don't think i would have taken the step to doing the actual "slaughter" (as my fellow salter jesse put it) if it hadn't been for percy. but he was determined that i should learn, and put the knife in my hand and held the chicken down and then just looked at me. and he wouldn't let me get away with doing just the one, but gave me the "assignment" of 10 chickens. he was also the one that showed me how to gut the chicken, reach in and pull out everything inside, and cut off the undesirable parts.

the undesirable parts are actually fewer than you would think. we got the whole chicken experience as for lunch that day we ate grilled intestines, livers, and boiled chicken feet. waste not, want not! i tried everything for the experience, but i don't think i'll be fighting my gogo and make at home for their preferred delicacy of chicken feet.

so, as you can guess, this whole experience was quite a stretching one for a former vegetarian. but as someone said that day, if you're willing to help eat the chicken, then you should be willing to help kill the chicken. and after all, i'm strangely proud of the fact that i now know how to turn a pecking, clucking bird into something that you could buy packaged in the freezer section of the supermarket. you never know when these things will come in handy...

so, the adventures continue. think of this as you're all eating your thanksgiving turkeys - someone spent an hour plucking that bird! unless someone invented a machine that does that, which i sincerely hope they did.