Red Bird, My Friend

doing the deed

doing the deed

So it was that Soup, Sandwich, and Sushi lived out the last of their days in isolation, gorging themselves happily, getting more plump and juicy day after day. As they grew, the weather got hotter. Hot enough that they would lay panting next to their feed dishes and not move. I worried they'd overheat and die.

I'd read stories about Cornish Crosses laying in the sun and dying rather than bothering to get up to get a drink of water or find shade. I wanted to give them a few more weeks, but I was having to check them all the time. I'd move them to the shade and hose them down during the hotter days.

I knew, unfortunately, that their time had come. I was going to have to do the deed, or else nature would. I'd raised them to eat. I wasn't going to let their sad little lives be in vain. So, I decided after I ran my first 5k, I'd come home and take care of business. One chicken for every mile run. Strange sort of logic, but that's how I work.

So after having a protein shake, I changed into clothes I didn't mind getting permanently messy. I bleached and cleaned my table outside. I prepped rope and the cone that would hold their wings and sharpened my knife.

Then I gathered up my first fat white bird, slipped it into the cone, and tied it by its feet. Then I panicked.

I couldn't do it.

"Mooommm?" I called back towards the house. My husband, son, and I were living at my parents' large farmhouse. My mom was an old hand at this sort of thing. But she'd told me these were my chickens, I had to do it myself.

"Yeah, hun?" She called from the kitchen.

"I can't do it!" I'd never slaughtered a chicken. Never killed anything besides bugs. I'd cared for this bird from a cute fluffy chick. I didn't dare check to see if it was Soup, Sandwich, or Sushi. Knowing which bird it was would just make it worse.

The poor creature hung there by its feet, its wings pinned to its sides by the plastic cone. It blinked slowly at me, its face turning from red to a sort of purple from the blood rushing to its head.

"It's going to die sooner or later. You might as well put it out of its misery," my mom called.

"I know, but... I've never... I don't know if I can!" I was shifting back and forth nervously in front of the poor beast, knife in hand. My in a morbid little chicken death dance. The beady little eye watched me and it struggled briefly in the cone. I whimpered. Thank god I'm not a crier.

"If it dies from the heat, it was a waste of effort," she told me sternly.

I nodded. She was right. I knew she was right. Still, it was incredibly hard to just do it.

I'll spare you the gory details. But I did finally slaughter and dress all three birds. Dressing them out was actually quite interesting. I've never been squeamish about anatomy or knowing where my food comes from. Still, those last moments I spent with them changed me.

But not in the way you might think.

I was proud I did it. I was proud to know I gave those birds a good, happy life free of medications, strict confinement, and other abuse. I was also proud to know that I was strong enough to do what was right and end their life with dignity and as painlessly as possible. Finally, I learned that I could feed my family even without supermarkets and factory farms.