Chicken Kill

by Carmella Guiol

The first time I saw a chicken being killed, it was by my own hand. I was living on a commune in southeast Portland (they preferred the term “intentional community”) and one of the chickens of the flock turned out to be a rowdy rooster. He was harassing all of the lady chickens and being a menace to the children on the farm, so we decided (by consensus, of course) to make him dinner. But when it came time to decide who was going to do the deed, it seemed everyone was much too busy to be bothered. One of the community members, Sue – a supremely sweet and soft-spoken mother of three – volunteered to take on the task, and I followed suit, forgetting momentarily that I’m just a city girl from Miami who has never so much as cooked a chicken, let alone killed one with my bare hands.  Although neither of us had done this before, we both wanted to get closer to our food, and this was the perfect opportunity to get truly up-close and personal.

One bright blue summer afternoon, Sue and I headed out into the field, she dangling the rooster at her side, grasping him firmly by his coarse feet, and me boldly clutching a sharp knife. We were told that if you held a chicken upside down by their legs, they would slip into a semi-unconscious state; it seemed to be working. Sue’s thin cheeks lost their color before we even reached the butcher’s block. She mumbled to the subdued rooster under her breath as we walked, his shiny black feathers flashing in the sunlight. “I’m so sorry about this. Really, I am. But you’ve had a good life, haven’t you?”, she tried to reason with him, pushing up her glasses nervously. He remained peacefully unresponsive. At this point, I was still feeling quite resolute about the whole affair. I had decided a while ago to face the truth about my food no matter how unpleasant that might be; this experience would put that decision to the test.

We got to a spot in the field that was partially hidden by some trees. As instructed by our fellow community members better versed in the art of chicken sacrifice, we hung an empty bottomless water jug from a sturdy branch; this was where we would stick the chicken upside down after the deed was done to let his arteries bleed out. Sue shook her head miserably, clearly disturbed by what we were about to do, and handed me the knife.

My determination seemed to evaporate as I took the blade in hand. There were several ways we could do this, but I had eschewed the method of breaking the chicken’s neck with my bare hands. “You could always put its neck under your foot and jerk it really hard,” Sue offered, trying to be helpful. I shook my head softly; the knife seemed quicker, cleaner.

We knelt down in the grass. I grasped the handle of the knife while Sue held down our victim. It wasn’t a particularly big knife, so I wasn’t going to chop its head clean off, but I hoped it was sharp enough to make the necessary incision as quickly and painlessly as possible. I wanted this whole ordeal to be over, and as I stood over our rooster friend, Sue cooing her final words of remorse, I seriously regretted having volunteered for the job. We both took a deep, calming breath. She stretched out his long, black neck and I took aim.

In one quick motion, I jabbed at his rubbery neck with my blade. Unfortunately, the cut wasn’t as fast or easy as I had hoped, much to my and Sue’s horror. I stabbed again, hoping for better results, but the knife bounced back at me. At this point, the chicken was squawking like crazy, having woken up with a start from his swinging slumber. He started batting his wings vehemently and trying with all his might to make a quick getaway. Sue was having trouble keeping him down and I was pretty sure that she was going to run for the hills at any moment. Hastily, I tried a new approach and began to saw at the leathery skin. This worked almost immediately and, much to my relief, a stream of hot blood leaked out of the wound and onto his dark plumage, still glittering regally in the sun.

Glad that the killing part was over, we smiled weakly at each other over the body and worked to wrestle the chicken into the makeshift kill cone, his body convulsing with uncontrollable spasms. Thankfully, we had been warned of this frightening side effect by our seasoned chicken killer friends. “Maybe that knife wasn’t sharp enough,” Sue mused, as we watched his body jerk unconsciously. “We really should have had a bigger knife,” I agreed regrettably.

Once the blood had stopped dripping and the body had gone limp, we took the chicken up to the house to be “processed”. On the back porch, Hans, the burly German nurse who lived in a teepee on the land, showed us how to properly skin and eviscerate the chicken. Sue and I watched intently but didn’t offer our help; we were still shaken from our experience in the field. I, for one, was extremely grossed out by the mere idea of sticking my hands inside the chicken’s body, so touching the slippery and slimy internal organs was out of the question. I had already summoned the courage to take this chicken’s life, and that was enough emotional stress for one day.

Once the bird had been stripped down to something that you might find at the grocery store, it was taken into the kitchen to become dinner. A few hours later, we all sat around the big, round table, enjoying our extremely local chicken meal. As I chewed thoughtfully on my rooster friend’s flesh, I thought about the scrappy life he led here on the farm. He wasn’t as fatty and full-bodied as a supermarket chicken would be; in fact, his meat was a bit tough and stringy. But I felt good knowing where he had spent his days, scratching around in the yard, pestering his flock mates and putting on a dramatic display of machismo to anyone who crossed his path.

Taking his life hadn’t been easy, certainly not as easy as picking up a frozen bird from the local grocery store, or better yet – an expertly seasoned, crisped to perfection, golden brown rotisserie chicken ready for immediate consumption. But this way felt uncomplicated, somehow, true and real. Biting my lip as I readied myself to go for the jugular, dull blade in hand, I had to dig deep within to find the strength to go through with the motion. Unlike so many things today that come far too easily and with casual convenience, I had to give a bit of myself to get something in return, and I’m thankful that I did.

Carmella Guiol is a community food activist and writer from Miami, Florida.  Read her blog: renouncerejoice.blogspot.com.