Can you pull the trigger?

I don’t know. We have a chicken that clearly needs to go. She must be culled. We have no choice now. The big risk with keeping an egg eater around is that sooner or later she will teach the others to do it too. Then you not only have to cull the one, but the entire flock. And I definitely don’t want that. When I read the book “Omnivore’s Dilemma” a couple years ago, I recall the description that Michael Pollan wrote about taking part in a chicken slaughter for the first time. He’d never killed an animal and here he was with a knife in his hand and everyone waiting for him to kill the chicken. Strangely it was a very spiritual description of his experience.

Certainly taking the life of another being in order to feed yourself is a powerful act and not something to take lightly. I imagine that it would teach you something about your own mortality. I recently took a hunter course with the sole intent that sometime soon I would like to hunt. I feel that if I am going to eat meat, rather than passing the dirty deed of death onto someone else, I should experience the feeling of killing an animal. I should experience what that feels like. I do not think in anyway that it would be a pleasant experience. In fact, I think I would feel quite terrible about it. But is it not hypocritical to eat animals and not be able to pull the trigger yourself?

And so here I am, facing this dilemma, much sooner than I thought I would have to. We eat chicken. We have a chicken that we need to cull. And I don’t want to do it. Sure we could call up our friend who raises chickens and ask him to do it. That would be easier. But, I feel that I have a responsibility to do this. I feel that I should know what it feels like. I’m sure this won’t be the last time we have to cull a chicken. So am I just putting off the inevitable if I don’t do it now? And then if I can actually do it. Then what? Do we just bury her in the ground? Well then that seems like a waste, doesn’t it? They are food after all. And didn’t we move out her for food? To see and learn where our food comes from. Well, here it is…