Death and all his friends

This morning, woke up and went to check gopher traps. 2 down, 130498329 million more to go. It's hard, you feel bad jabbing traps down their holes and into their living rooms but at the same time it feels like the battle against them is never ending. These days I feel bad for them, winter is coming and they must be having to work harder for food, it's sad seeing their cute faces squeezed between those big metal clamps. But thinking back a few months I can remember cursing them over and over while having to fix endless leaks in the strawberry irrigation... Can you really justify killing an animal only at certain times of the year? Yes yes, november through march you are allowed to live but watch out, the rest of the year I'll be out to get you!

Being around large groups of chickens they become dirty and seem stupid, they all act as a single unit. But passing the coop of 90 chickens this morning we found four broken eggs in the bushes; a renegade chicken had decided to flee the coop and start her own nest nearby (then an animal had found the loot). My faith in the individuality of chickens was restored!

A somewhat unfortunate realization for me since just a few hours later we found out that we had to kill chickens for a visiting group... (Heidi and I then spent a rather humorous twenty minutes chasing chickens in circles to try and snatch three of them.)

With three chickens stuffed into a cat carrier we walked up to Caleb's to do the slaughtering. It was these few hundred yards that felt the most uncomfortable and wrong. Not the slitting of the throat or the cutting of the head, the walking. I had chosen these three unlucky hens to be killed and with every step was bringing them closer and closer to their doom.

The station was all set up: three metal cones, a bucket for blood, a pot of water (150 degrees), knives, a plucker. I even wore my rattiest t-shirt, anticipating a bloodbath. Surprisingly the whole process was cleaner than I had expected. A bit of warm blood on my hand was in fact the dirtiest I got.

That was a weird moment, having to hold on to the soft head so that the body didn't flop in the cone as the blood drained. A moment of connection, of understanding. But as soon as it fell limp, I changed. I pulled it out by its feet and held it hanging in the air, it no longer felt so much like my pet. I guess in my head it had already begun the transition from cute animal to tomorrow's soup. That was the most shocking to me, the speed at which the process happened. Within seconds the birds went from soft warm hens to slimy carcasses, a science experiment.

Without heads, feet, and feathers, the bodies became something to dissect, the actual moment of death was forgotten.

My favorite part was in the dissection, finding eggs of all sizes inside. One large white egg that was never laid, lots of smaller yolks clumped together, the possibility of life in death.