232 animal, vegetable, miracle
The girls returned carrying rooster #1 upside down, by the legs. Inver-
sion has the immediate effect of lulling a chicken to sleep, or something
near to it. What comes next is quick and fi nal. We set the rooster gently
across our big chopping block (a legendary fixture of our backyard, whose
bloodstains hold visiting children in thrall), and down comes the ax. All
sensation ends with that quick stroke. He must then be held by the legs
over a large plastic bucket until all the blood has run out. Farmers who
regularly process poultry have more equipment, including banks of “kill-
ing cones” or inverted funnels that contain the birds while the processor
pierces each neck with a sharp knife, cutting two major arteries and end-
ing brain function. We’re not pros, so we have a more rudimentary setup.
By lulling and swiftly decapitating my animal, I can make sure my rela-
tively unpracticed handling won’t draw out the procedure or cause pain.
What you’ve heard is true: the rooster will fl ap his wings hard during
this part. If you drop him he’ll thrash right across the yard, unpleasantly
spewing blood all around, though the body doesn’t run—it’s nothing that
well coordinated. His newly detached head silently opens and closes its
mouth, down in the bottom of the gut bucket, a world apart from the
ruckus. The cause of all these actions is an explosion of massively fi ring
neurons without a brain to supervise them. Most people who claim to be
running around like a chicken with its head cut off, really, are not even
close. The nearest thing might be the fi nal convulsive seconds of an All-
Star wrestling match.
For Rooster #1 it was over, and into the big kettle for a quick scald.
After a one- minute immersion in 145-degree water, the muscle tissue re-
leases the feathers so they’re easier to pluck. “Easier” is relative—every
last feather still has to be pulled, carefully enough to avoid tearing the
skin. The downy breast feathers come out by handfuls, while the long
wing and tail feathers sometimes must be removed individually with pli-
ers. If we were pros we would have an electric scalder and automatic
plucker, a fascinating bucket full of rotating rubber fi ngers that does the
job in no time flat. For future harvests we might borrow a friend’s equip-
ment, but for today we had a pulley on a tree limb so we could hoist the
scalded carcass to shoulder level, suspending it there from a rope so sev-
eral of us could pluck at once. Lily, Abby, and Eli pulled neck and breast