What I Learned When I Killed a Chicken

I admit, I kind of wanted to kill a chicken. Last spring, when I bought a dozen hatchlings, the cashier at the feed store told me that one of them might "accidentally" grow up to be a rooster. Because roosters are illegal in my Northern California suburb, I would have to get rid of it. To say that I hoped one of the fluffy chicks was male would be overstating the case, but it would be fair to say I was at peace with the prospect. Though I've never intentionally killed anything more evolved than a crab, I was pretty sure I could cull a rooster. But you never really know.

Slaughtering one's own meat has become a rite of passage for Americans who are serious about food, almost an imperative. All the cool kids are doing it, and there's something boastful in their accounts. "You can leave the killing to others and pretend it never happened, or you can look it in the eye and know it," writes Barbara Kingsolver before dispatching turkeys (“heritage,” of course) in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle [2]. And then there's Michael Pollan. "The more I'd learned about the food chain, the more obligated I felt to take a good, hard look at all of its parts," Pollan writes in The Omnivore's Dilemma [3], as he prepares to annihilate some poultry: "It seemed to me not too much to ask of a meat eater, which I was then and still am, that at least once in his life he take some direct responsibility for the killing on which his meat-eating depends."

No, it's not too much to ask. I entirely agree. But what exactly is one supposed to glean from the experience? A biology lesson? A deeper reverence for the animals that die for our dining pleasure? A decision to give up eating flesh altogether?

I should have known that Arlene—big, rude, handsome Arlene—was a boy. Even as a downy chick huddled under a light bulb, Arlene was more butch, brawny, and aggressive than the others. One morning in August, she proclaimed her manhood. The crowing of a rooster is a sound my neighborhood has not heard for decades, and there was no question from whose Clampett-like yard it emanated.

It was suggested that I give Arlene to someone who lives in the country, that I free him in the woods (to be humanely dismembered by raccoons?), or that I return him to the feed store. I knew exactly what I was going to do. "I could never butcher one of my pets," a friend reproached, which pissed me off. Neither could I. But semiferal Arlene, who swaggered around the yard snarfing up centipedes and bullying the hens? Not a pet.

Launch a photo gallery of the grisly death of Arlene. [4]

My father, who put himself through college working at a slaughterhouse, came over to help with the job. None of us had laid hands on Arlene in weeks. At the sight of us, the chicken raced around the yard, squawking furiously, until, after a flying tackle, he was landed. A worthy foe, that bird. I let my father do the hard part. I held Arlene down on a stump and watched my father cut off his head with a pair of gardening shears. Arlene thrashed for a bit and went still. My hands were covered with blood.

We took Arlene back to the house, and I dunked him in scalding water, holding him by his chalk-green feet. When I pulled him out, he smelled like wet cat. Plucking isn't much harder than shucking corn, and the feathers came off in sticky fistfuls. After slicing open the body and scooping out the innards, I possessed a fowl that (sort of) resembled the pale birds at the supermarket.

Novella Carpenter devotes much of her wonderful recent book, Farm City [5], to her adventures raising and slaughtering livestock in the inner city. She approvingly quotes Carla Emery, author of The Encyclopedia of Country Living [6]: "I don't think much of people who say they like to eat meat but go 'ick' at the sight of a bleeding animal. Doing our own killing, cleanly and humanely, teaches us humility and reminds us of our interdependence with other species.”

I didn't "go 'ick,' " so I guess I get a gold star. On the other hand, I didn't feel especially humble as I contemplated Arlene's dressed carcass. I've eaten a lot of chickens in my life, and they were all dead. There are good people who might need to kill a chicken to understand the link between a living bird and a McNugget, but apparently I had grasped and accepted the concept from the get-go.

The next day, I made chicken soup. My children knew exactly what was in the pot, and to my surprise, ate with gusto. "We're honoring Arlene by not wasting her," said my 8-year-old son. They must teach that stuff in school these days, because he didn't get it from me. I, on the other hand, was less than gung-ho about the meal. I've never been too keen on chicken, with its brittle bones and pimply skin, and this was not just any chicken. This chicken had eaten centipedes. I kept flashing on those centipedes. There's a downside to knowing where your food comes from, but I closed my eyes, thought of the empire, and ate the soup.

That I'm even writing this story shows how much things have changed from a century ago, when people regularly dined on household livestock. Many people around the world today still do, of course, and there's nothing cruel or barbaric about killing an animal that you intend to eat. It's certainly cleaner and more humane than what happens at a Tyson plant, and if factory-farmed meat is your only other option, maybe you should sharpen your ax.

What I don't believe is that slaughtering your own meat is virtuous. The very same day that Arlene lost her head, my local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, ran a story quoting K. Ruby Blume, the founder of an organization called the Institute of Urban Homesteading. "The level of appreciation for nature and life when you slaughter your own meat creates a kind of ethic that I think is what we need to save the world," said Blume, who raises rabbits in Oakland. "That's why I do this—I want to live with a deep gratefulness and appreciation for what the world provides me."

Don't we all. I can only speak for myself, but lopping off an animal's head didn't do it for me. What I felt, instead, was a deep gratefulness and appreciation for what Whole Foods provides me. And, with all due respect to Blume, I doubt that butchering livestock creates "a kind of ethic" that will save the world. I rely not just on my own paltry experience for this insight, but on the gory whole of human history. I know this sounds heartless, but it's the truth: Killing Arlene was messy and mundane, like cleaning the gutters.