7 Dec 2004
The Chicken Speaks!
Warning: if you are a vegetarian, you may find offense with this post. In that case, heed this warning. I want no comments about how Eating Chicken is Wrong.
Last night I had a strange experience with a chicken.
I needed to cut one up to boil so I could make chicken and dumplings. I can cut up a chicken and all, although I am not terribly adept at making the pieces resemble chicken parts. I would buy a chicken already cut up, but my grandmother scared me by telling me that when you do so, you don’t know if that’s, like, just one chicken cut up, or if it’s half of a good chicken and they threw the other half away, or maybe it had a rotten leg, and then maybe the chicken they found to replace that rotten leg was rotten everywhere but that leg that you are about to cook.
(This is also, by the way, the grandmother who grew up in the woods, and when first introduced to a banana, ate the whole thing, peel and all. She was also keen on the phrase “slicker than owl manure” to describe slippery things, like a new package of Uno cards. And one more anecdote: she used to pay me $5 to kick her in the back.)
Anyway, so I got home from work and put on my chicken cutting up clothes (AKA not corduroy pants), and opened the package and began to rinse Chicken off. I thought Chicken was a little weird when we bought him (her? no idea); his legs were especially long. So I turn Chicken over, and he is still a little frosty and stuck together, and when I go to, um, open him up, he said this:
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssss.
I figured I was merely delusional and continued on with the rinsing of Chicken and removal of gross parts. Then he said it again:
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssss.
Then I cut his legs off, and I didn’t hear another peep out of him.
December 7th, 2004 at 1:11 pm
GROSS.
December 7th, 2004 at 1:24 pm
I told you not to read it.
December 7th, 2004 at 1:25 pm
Oh yeah. This is exactly why I buy those nice & tidy pre-skinned, pre-cut chicken breasts under cellophane.
However, I do buy the organic free-range kind, because I figure that if I’m going to eat chickens, I’m at least going to eat the happy ones.
December 7th, 2004 at 1:32 pm
maybe someone was sighing when she flash-froze the chicken at the factory–and her “haaaaaasssssss” got frozen inside the chicken. i know. i’m dumb. i’m also facinated by the flash-freezing of things. jaxxie and nog were telling me all about this process the other night.
1)why did you have to kick her in the back?
2)which grandmother was this?
3) i have warned every chicken eater i know about frankenstein chicken parts since i first heard this tale in 1998.
December 7th, 2004 at 2:05 pm
She had had back surgery some years before, and the tiny kicks of a 4-year-old child must somehow equate a Swedish massage. This is Mawmaw, of course! My other grandmother has no charming anecdotes associated with her, except maybe that she illegally ate my wedding cake before official wedding cake (cupcake) eating time. Then blamed it on Martha, who didn’t stop her.
I like the frozen sigh story better than the thought that perhaps it was the chicken’s soul escaping into my house.
December 7th, 2004 at 2:27 pm
I too buy the deconstructed Chicken, on the theory that I’d rather run the risk of consuming the flesh of a chicken with 1 gimpy arm than invite the demonic spirit of a recently deceased, largely intact, flightless barnyard animal into my home.
December 7th, 2004 at 2:39 pm
I am a firm believer in eating any meat, in any shape, as long as it isn’t visibly rank. I will try anything once (buffalo, ostrich, whale, seal, bear…). You gotta try it all, man.
December 7th, 2004 at 3:20 pm
Body cavity sigh?
Maybe gizzard reflux?
I’ve got no clue.
December 7th, 2004 at 4:30 pm
I can’t buy the whole chickens. I had a rotisserie and tried to put a chicken in there and ended up crying because it looked like I was about to cook a small, deformed child. I gave the rotisserie away.
December 7th, 2004 at 10:18 pm
must. shock. chicken.