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Writing in Slate, urban farmer L.E. Leone describes her emotions when killing one of her own chickens: "I kneel in the dirt, holding the body still while it flutters, and hyperventilate... I feel alive and in love and closer than ever to death." Which got me thinking: how would I feel if presented with a live bird and a sharp ax?
I'm pretty darn sure I could do it. I certainly eat enough meat that I should be able to deal with where it comes from. While, like many people, I've got issues with the meat industry as it exists in America today, I'm pretty comfortable with the concept of the food chain. I don't get grossed out by blood. I used to drive an ambulance. I grind my own sausage. But I've never directly killed anything bigger than a trout. Would it be weird? Would I cry, as Leone claims she does each and every time? If I didn't get teary, would I feel guilty for being an insensitive killer?
What do you think? Could you kill a chicken?
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6-06-2008 @11:35AM totoro said... Gabrielle Hamilton, the chef at Prune, wrote about killing her first chicken-it was pretty brutal sounding.
http://tinyurl.com/4v7wbf
(Excerpt from a great series of books about Food Writing, btw)
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6-06-2008 @11:39AM sng said... Did it all the time as a kid. Watching them run around without their heads is great fun.
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6-06-2008 @11:40AM Schlake said... I'm 100% positive that I can kill a chicken, a rooster, a goat, a sheep, a pig, and a rabbit. I can also clean them, skin them (or pluck), tan their hides (if applicable), and cook them.
I really don't want too. It's kind of icky, and I never enjoy eating them as much as things that someone else has killed.
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6-06-2008 @12:20PM rc said... We used to just slit their throats and put them in a large plastic drum thing and cover it and wait till the flapping stops.
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6-06-2008 @12:21PM eramano moore said... God provided animals for food. you may not use the ax yourself but if you eat it , you caused it.
It is not bad. It is part of life. We all live and death is a part of it. The chicken serves the purpose that God gave it. Have you?
I am thankful I was born and not aborted. I am glad no Dr. used the ax on me. That is pretty icky also. Killed before birth. Now that is a topic
that is worth talking about. Wish people were as concerned about developing , living humans as they are about chickens. I am in the Politically incorrect section, aren't I?
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6-06-2008 @12:43PM Hyperfocal said... It would depend entirely upon how hungry I was. Sated after a dinner of braised short ribs and crusty bread? No way, no how. Hungry and responsible for procuring my own protein? In a heartbeat. ;)
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6-06-2008 @1:45PM Jan said... My DH went off to look for work and left the kids and me home on this farm. We were eating out of the garden and freezer. Then things were getting low and I decided to kill one of the chickens! I finally got one, took it out and laid the ax to his neck it squawked I jerked the ax up. It sat there till my older boy came home from school to do the job his mom could not. No I don't kill chickens. That was the toughest bird we every ate.
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6-06-2008 @2:06PM Harlan said... I've read that one way to do it is to put them head-first into an inverted traffic cone, so their heads stick out, then to decapitate them. This also avoids having to bleed them separately. I think I could do it if I could avoid having to touch the bird during the process. Perhaps a guillotine could be rigged up...
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6-06-2008 @2:33PM Numb said... I definitely could. I really hate the people who choose to eat meat but try to deny that it comes from the life of an animal. I'm very pro-meat, but I think it's important to understand both our place in the food chain and the sacrifice involved in our consumption.
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6-06-2008 @3:40PM Alex Falk said... I could do it.
Although I would probably try and take it on the run, with a sharp long knife.
Yes, I have seen too many Samurai movies.
Either that or I would take the head off with a shotgun like a Turkey.
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6-06-2008 @3:55PM Jo said... My mom grew up in rural china and they raised chickens to eat and when we visited my grandparents in mississippi they killed some chickens for dinner. Once I went with Mom to a live chicken shop in chinatown, she would stick her hand in the cages to feel how meaty they were, she pulled out a couple of chicken by their legs, turned them upside down and extended her hand to me and said to hold them while she checked out the ones in the back. I ran screaming out of the shop!
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6-06-2008 @4:52PM Lauren Evans said... If it was a matter of life or death, I could probably do it... but I'd be crying the entire time. I'm not a foodie who doesn't appreciate where her meat comes from... but it makes it easier knowing I didn't have to look it in the eye first.
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6-06-2008 @9:16PM pheadlessg said... To be honest, it's harder than it seems. The first time I killed an animal bigger than a housefly was volunteering at a research station in Ecuador. While out on a hike one day with the other volunteers, the staff and the reserve dog, the dog went snuffling around in the dirt ahead of us and brought back a baby armadillo grasped between its teeth. After much shouting, the dog dropped it. It was still alive at the time and I'm going to spare you the gory details but with barely a moment's consideration I thought that I had to spare it the misery of a slow and painful death.
That took a lot out of me. A hell of a lot. I still haven't really gotten over it entirely. Killing something close up is hard because... Well, you're going to look the bugger in the eyes and realise that you are in fact ending the life of a living thing. Killing bugs without batting an eyelid is tolerable because you're not really thinking of them as something normal. An annoyance at best.
Something larger and you're talking serious guilt and mental repercussions for a while.
That's the first time, though. Once the rest of the staff heard about it they kept me in the kitchen to kill pigs and chickens for dinner and honestly - I had far fewer problems once I knew it was for food rather than for mercy. Strange.
Still, I got a decent story out of it. I think I'm the only person in the north of England to have euthanised a baby armadillo with a penknife. Now I just wish I'd eaten it so I didn't feel so guilty...
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6-10-2008 @8:19AM Steven O'Carroll said... I could kill a chicken in a second. Same with a cow or a pig... But a rabbit, deer or anything else Disney have made into a loveable character and it gets difficult. For a how-to lesson look no further (not for the faint-hearted ;) http://www.ifoods.tv/site/member-video.jsp?memberVideo=23
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