The Butcher of Marion Bridge

Posted on June 5, 2013 under Storytelling with one comment

 By Gerard macDonald

I walked out to the chicken coop, burdened with the duty I finally had to face. For several months, adorable peeping fluffballs had metamorphosed into somewhat less adorable, clucking, fully-matured Meat Kings. At the age of twenty weeks, these feisty squabs had reached their date with destiny.

Until now, this pusillanimous poultry man had not been up to the undertaking. Instead, the chickens’ ravenous appetites had continued to be stoked with limitless rations of Poultry Grower, Co-op Scratch and Grit. This led to unforeseen consequences, a perversion of the Darwinian struggle: survival of the fattest. Each morning, their bulging, glaring, lipid-engorged eyes would taunt me, daring me to end their gluttonous lives.

This went on for several weeks until finally, I was forced to take the first necessary step, known as “the cull.” One particular chicken, having temporarily enjoyed a growth spurt, developed a dysplastic leg and rapidly fell behind. Becoming scrawnier and weaker, he regressed to a dirty, mangled feather doormat. Although I have always been philosophically opposed to euthanasia, I thought I’d better give him a gentler death than what surely awaited him from the eagle eyeing his weakness from a nearby treetop.

Taking advice from the “How to” manuals, I set up the killing field in assembly-line fashion: first, the axe and tree stump; secondly, the scalding tank for plucking; thirdly, the knives for eviscerating and de-fatting. Try as I may, I could not summon the requisite brutishness for the conventional “elimination.” I couldn’t bear to have him watch me. In the true spirit of humanism I decided to sneak up on the unsuspecting bird from behind, rap him on the skull with a hammer, and send the poor fellow into blissful sweet sleep.

It didn’t work. The first blow glanced off his tiny head. He turned and glared at me in hatred, turning his neck in sudden saccadic movements, as only a pissed off chicken can. I slunk out of the coop amidst a cacophony of clucking and jeering.

I regrouped and crept back in – this time making the intended contact. There was no sweet sleep. Instead, there was a distraught bird flapping wildly with an arterial spurter arcing across the straw-covered floor. I panicked. Like a madman, I seized the struggling animal, raced outside and, missing the crucial first step, plunged the unfortunate bird into the scalding tank. The nightmare intensified as beating wings turned the water to froth for what seemed an eternity before de-effervescing. As the chicken’s wet body turned limp in my hand, the enormity of my crime hit me. Pale, nauseated and trembling, I stumbled back inside.

As a physician, I had sworn to uphold the Hippocratic oath, and to follow the golden rule of Dr.William Osler “ first, do no harm”.

Forgive me father, for I have sinned.

I don’t eat eggs much anymore.

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