Further Thoughts on Fowl

In yesterday's post I mentioned a relative who'd drowned a rooster. In her defense, this is the only rooster she's ever drowned. She beheaded all the others. When I told her it was really mean to drown a rooster she told me "Oh, birds have brains like fish. Want to know what it's like to be a rooster? Close your eyes and look at the overhead light. They can only sense shapes."

I wasn't buying it. If you can sense shapes, you can sense a bucket of water.

Naturally, PolackPappy had to chime in with a story of his own. The Babcia's mother, a true immigrant (she came here around the turn of the last century at 17 to get married), would buy 25 chicks every Easter, raise them to teenagerhood in the bathtub of her Southie triple-decker, then send them to the farm in NH. For 25 weeks in a row there was fresh chicken for Sunday dinner, nearly through Christmas.

Pp and his brother were in charge of dispatch. One year, they were down to the last bird -- a rooster. There was freshly-fallen snow. They took that rooster to the front yard, chopped off his head, and immediately tossed him up into the air where, wings-a-flappin, arterial spurt a-spurtin, he sprayed blood in wide arcs all over the place.

Dee-lightful. That tale was followed up with one about Pp's pal Lester, who used to nap under an apple tree in the backyard with a pistol in his lap, so he could shoot woodchucks. Lester was out plowing one winter's eve when he hit a deer, nearly decapitating it. Not one to waste fresh meat, he got out his trusty sharp knife and field-dressed it. Later he heard cop cars go screaming by his house. "What's going on?" he asked a neighbor.

"Someone's been murdered up the road. There's blood everywhere but no body," said the neighbor. Lester got back in his plow truck and headed out to let the police know what had really happened.