Today, as I was sitting and talking to Rich, Jared comes running into the house from visiting the neighbors.  He was a bit freaked out and appeared somewhat scared.  On his way home from the neighbor's house, their rooster had chased him all the way home, trying to flog him.  In a matter of a minute my phone rings.  It was my neighbor & she wanted to know how to kill a rooster. 

This rooster had flogged two of her children & my neighbor, herself.  Now it had chased Jared all the way home and Klara was afraid to leave (obviously!).  My neighbor, knowing I had grown up on a farm, wanted some answers and wanted them now. 

Let me preface this by saying that even though I grew up on a 116 acre farm & certainly saw my fair share of animal slaughter & cleaning (my father & brother hunted) I had never actually killed a chicken.  I have been a party to their cleaning, but never actually killed a chicken.  I felt a bit nervous about the whole thing & offered some suggestions, but she was afraid to try because he was mean and tried to hurt everyone.

By the way, this rooster was new to their flock and, so, we never had this problem previously with any of the chickens.  I asked Rich if he wanted to go help the neighbor and he had a lot of reasons why he couldn't.  Basically, he is a chicken, himself!  My husband has never been hunting or even has cleaned a fish for that matter.  He's a critical care nurse and is pretty hardened when it comes to gruesome human situations, but a chicken killing was a bit foreign to him.

I sighed and got my shoes on...somebody had to do something and it might as well be me.  I *am* the resident farmer and used to this kind of thing, so off I went.  My neighbor and the kids were peeking out the windows and the door when I approached & she hollared out to me and told me that he would try and attack me.  Yeah, there was no easy way to kill this rooster.  He was too mean just to grab up and kill by the traditional methods.

I will spare all the squimish who might be reading, but the rooster got his killing.  I made the neighbor take all the kids in and pull the blinds & I killed the rooster.  My neighbor was so relieved...even the kids were relieved...it was so crazy that a rooster could terrify a bunch of people like that and disrupt life in such a way!  My neighbor and I stood and stared at the rooster...then Rich came out...yeah....after all the killing had occurred!  It seemed as though my neighbor was thinking we were just going to stop at this point and be done with everything.  Oh, how wrong she was!

I don't kill anything for sport or fun.  If I am going to kill something it is going to be eaten & that meant that this terrorist rooster was going to have to be plucked and cleaned.  My neighbor looked at me like I was kidding...but I wasn't.  I walked quietly home to retrieve a large pot to boil some water. 

She had never had any dealings with chicken processing, so I told her I would show her how and I did.  When we were done, he no longer resembled the terrorist rooster we had all known and feared, but an item you would toss into your shopping cart at the local grocery store.  She was amazed.  It was kind of funny, to me, to see someone so amazed about something so basic.  People just have no idea, anymore, what has to happen so they can enjoy their dinner...or even those chicken nuggets that all the kids enjoy. 

I told her that this rooster was much better to consume than all of the chicken that she buys from the store as it had not been fed antibiotics, hormones, or any other junk.  When it was all said and done, I think she felt proud that she had accomplished such a basic task as preparing a chicken after a slaughter.  She put it in the freezer and we are going to have a neighborhood dinner on Monday of chicken and dumplings. 

I went home around 4:30 in the afternoon and promptly passed out in a deep slumber on our sofa.  No one could, apparently, get me up to go to bed and I don't remember anything after that.  Truthfully, I think it was stress and relief of being done with the gruesome task.  I have not lived on a farm for nearly 15 years and I have grown soft in my old age.  I had forgot a lot of my knowledge regarding this kind of activity and only did it come back after I had started the job.   I am thankful for having lived on a farm and for knowing how to do these types of things.  I think it is important for people to know how to live self-sufficiently and be aware of the facts behind what they eat.  But that didn't make me any less stressed out about the whole ordeal.  My grandmother used to kill a chicken with her bare hands and not think anything about it.  She was a hardcore, early 20th century farm girl and something like that was just a part of life and she thought nothing of it. 

I always enjoyed learning from my grandmother.  Older people are fascinating to listen and learn from and I am glad I took an interest in her life.  Many of the knowledge from earlier generations has been lost...from preparing a chicken for cooking to picking wild greens to eat.  I am glad I listened and I know that a little part of her lives on because I know & remember the lessons I was taught.

So here I am awake at 3 a.m.  Of course I am awake, I have already slept my required time and am ready to go.  But I am going to have to go back to bed and sleep some more or my whole schedule will be messed up tomorrow.  We are having our Christmas morning tomorrow since Rich will be working on Christmas day.  I had better get to bed.  Just another day in West Virginia....