In class the other night they came upon this conversation of seeing an animal being killed for the first time. Everyone had a story of a chicken or a pig or a goat.

I had a story too, but I didn’t tell them . . . they weren’t worth my story. But I think I’ll write it for posterity.

My grandfather had chickens, I may have talked about the chickens before . . . I was afraid of the chickens . . . anyway. There was this one chicken with a limp. My grandfather didn’t want it to breed other limping chickens, so he told my brother to kill it. The 13 year old gladly accepted the challenge. He grabbed his hatched, grabbed the chicken and headed down to the big boulder that stuck out of the ground at the end of the field.

Being a curious 5 year old, I of course followed the brother, the hatchet and the limping chicken.

He may have described to me what was going to happen, I don’t remember. I do remember the hatchet hitting the stone, the head falling to one side, the limping chicken falling to the other side, and the amazing sight of a headless, limping chicken with blood splirting out of his neck flapping and running in circles until he fell down, kicked his good leg a few times and then finally gave it up.

I don’t remember being traumatized by it at all. I did stop eating chicken not long after that. Maybe I was traumatized, and I’ve blocked it out. Who knows. I still don’t like chickens with or without heads.