To Kill a Chickenbird

Or, The Marshall Vacation Begins

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Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.

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So begin many of

Chloe Hope

’s exquisite reflections on her Substack, Death & Birds, a newsletter primarily about, as the name suggests, death and birds. If you have never encountered her writings, I wholeheartedly commend them to your reading (or listening: her voice is angelic). In fact, I wouldn’t be entirely offended if you left this post to read hers and never returned. It’s completely understandable.

And yet I do hope to entice you to stay for today, on the occasion of my 34th birthday, I offer you my own story about death and birds. You see, my vacation started much like this post: with fowl mortality.

Across the street from my home is a man much inclined to labor. Fruit trees and berry bushes dot his front yard, and there isn’t a day I can remember in the past four-and-a-half years that I haven’t seen him in his garage tinkering on his motorcycle, in the garden tending to his plums and pears and blackberries, or both. There are few things as dependable in my life as his toiling presence. He is an aging man (nearly retired, now) and, as far as I know, single. I have noticed that the brim of his hat has the curious quality of expanding and shrinking with the rising and falling of the Georgia temperatures—the warmer, the wider. A straw hat for every mark of the thermometer. A vast collection.

But the day before the day before my family was to leave, he had no hat on, his mostly-bald scalp peering up at the overcast sky. No hat? This should have been my first clue that something wasn’t quite right. As I pulled into my driveway, his legs carried his Hobbit-like frame across the cul-de-sac to my property and then they stopped, holding him in place as he waited for me to exit my vehicle.

He greeted me. “Hiya, neighbor.”

“Hey there, Matthew.” We’ll call him Matthew.

“By chance, are you missing a chicken?” he asked.

“No sir,” I replied. “Last I was out back, all mine were accounted for. What’s it look like?”

“About-” he made a cantaloupe-sized shape with his splayed fingers, “that big? Mostly gray, feathers on its feet. It’s really cool. Just wandered into my backyard and it’s been following me around while I work.” The chicken admired Matthew’s labor too.

“Nah, definitely not mine. All of mine are blonde or brown. But, uh, I wouldn’t mind seeing it?”

“Come take a look!”

I followed Matthew back across the cul-de-sac to his property and followed him up his driveway and into his backyard, somewhere I’d never ventured. A separate garage sits at the end of his extended driveway. Fruit trees and berry bushes dot his backyard just as they do the front, the only difference being a small greenhouse set at the middle of the property. A pristine raised back deck sits to my right.

“Welp… I’m not sure where she’s at now. Last I saw her she was right over here,” Matthew pointed to a berry bush.

I scanned the yard. Grass that got attention, but not too much. Plums. Pears. No chicken, though. I turned to walk back to his driveway and return to my house.

Hung miserably over the stairs, a slight chicken-shaped raincloud entered my vision. “Ah-ha!” Perched on Matthew’s deck was a mangled poof of feathers, complete with cartoon eyes and stick-figure feet drawn by a kindergartener. The vagabond hen. A Silkie, taboot! Her condition: rough. Feathers had been torn from her wings, neck, tail, and even her feet. Local canines and, no doubt, trash pandas appeared to have laid paws on her. But there was no visible injuries or bleeding. She let me walk right up to her and pick her up without struggle. I counted six toes on each foot. Chickens normally have four toes, and Silkies are known to have five due to a condition called “polydactyly.” Six was only one more than five, so I figured it was probably just a genetic quirk.

“I don’t have chickens anymore,” Matthew said. “I have no way of taking care of her. But you’ve got a coop, a run, food, a-…”

“No no, you’re right. I can take’er.” Matthew had a point. If the Silkie was going to wander anywhere, my yard was the better bet. “Thanks for putting her on my radar.”

I made my way back to my yard, opened the run, and popped her in the Swiftie Coop—each of our birds is named for a Taylor Swift album because I love my wife and she let me get chickens. We named the new girl “Debut”. Debut made her way to the back corner where my eldest daughter placed a small pile of layer (that is, “laying hen”) pellets in front of her to eat. The others—Folklore, Reputation, Midnights, Fearless, and Lover—immediately congregated in one corner, skeptical of the newcomer. They’d done something similar when Fearless and Lover had been introduced from another flock, so I didn’t think about. Normal behavior from the chickenfolk as far as I could tell.

They all made their way from the closed in run into the coop at the usual time—roughly sundown—and cozied up for the night. Debut fell in line. I was pleased at the way things were going.

Daylight crested the horizon the following morning, the day before we were to leave Georgia and travel to California for our epic National Park Vacation. I got up at my customary time to water the garden and tend to the chickens. My wife and I stood at the kitchen window overlooking our backyard, watching the flock move about the run when I noticed something odd. A dance. Debut was…shuffling? A puff chested double wing flap followed by a sort of bull-like stamp, a sideways two-step, and rounded out with a short hop.

“Huh,” I said aloud to my wife. “Oddly aggressive.”

She agreed. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. They’ll figure it out.”

“Definitely. There’s going to be a short period where they sort through the pecking order, and this is probably part of tha-”

I was cut short, for at that moment Debut grounded her stance like an anime character powering up, drew a deep breath, and unleashed a crow that made the pines shiver.

We said what comes next in complete unison.

“…oh shit.” Debut was De-Roo.

Someone else had learned (likely in a similar manner) that Debut was a rooster and had tossed him out the car window at the soonest opportunity, dooming him to wander the streets until either some charitable soul took him in or he was made the meal of a feral critter. By appearances, the latter had been attempted, but Debut was as plucky as he was plucked. He was a survivor.

Looking back, there were signs. Polydactyly in an animal is not, by definition, five toes, but for Silkies that happens to be the case. Debut had six. Or so I thought. The extra digits I had mistaken for, well, digits, were in fact his growing spurs, still short and nubby and rounded and easily mistaken for toes. His little jig was not the Silkie Dance of Greeting or an introductory “get-to-know-ya” ritual, it was what roosters do to assert their dominance over the other birds in their vicinity. Even his bock-bocks were at a far deeper pitch. But it was his full-throated, cocksure bellow at the rising sun that made it all clear.

There was another cock-a-doodle-doo. And another. Another. One more. Each crow like a hammer pounding a nail into my mind, and on the nail was written, “Cannot Keep.”

Never mind that my wife could never abide the Silkie’s Song drawing her out of her slumber each morning. No, the more pertinent problems were our neighbors and local law enforcement. If the neighbors didn’t call the cops, the roo would. My mind raced. Whatever the solution was to be, it needed to happen quick: we were to leave our house at 4am the following morning to begin our vacation.

Roosters are notoriously difficult to rehome. Many shelters won’t take them. Tractor Supply doesn’t take returns (not that I got him there). I reached out to a friend that lives on a sizeable spread in the North Georgia mountains with numerous animals and various birds and explained my situation. Would they take him? They would! But it would have to wait one to two weeks as they were headed out of town.

Drat. I was also headed out of town, and there’s no way I could risk the neighbors (or the rooster) calling the cops. There was no one else I could call. No shelter I could find that would take him. What was I to do? Did I have to…?

The option I had not wanted to consider now niggled at my mind and crept to the fore: I would have to dispatch Debut myself.

But how?

I’m of thoroughgoing suburbanite stock. Life with the land was not my family’s life, and the skills of my German and Irish ancestors were not bequeathed to me. Yards were meant for chlorinated water and fescue or Bermuda grass. Vegetables belonged properly to a grocer’s aisle, not a farmer’s field. Meat was always conveniently packaged and waiting for me on a shelf, gloriously free of blood, feathers, guts, and death. There was nothing to consider but my appetite. The mess of getting everything I could need ready for my consumption was not my concern. My responsibility was merely to consume, and consume I did. Faithfully so. My hands were gloriously free from the stench of death.

And yet it was to death that my hands were now called.

If it all sounds a bit dramatic, you’re beginning to understand the dissonance I felt. I’m going to describe what I ended up doing, so if you were looking for a good time to go read one of Chloe’s reflections, it’s now. The squeamish have been warned.

A quick Google search unearthed a dozen different ways to kill a chicken. Some of these sources contradicted each other—as they do—and so I narrowed it down to three viable methods. I cross-referenced my short list with my mountain friend, and he verified two of them for me: hang him upside down until he passes out then slit his throat, or else lay him out and strike his neck strong and true with an axe.

The first seemed best on account of what I had available to me. I rummaged through my garage for some material and returned to the run, shooing the hens out, grabbing Debut by his raptor-like, scaly legs, flipping him upside down, and suspending him. Twenty to thirty minutes. Every source told me it would be twenty to thirty minutes before he’d go out cold, then I could Sweeny Todd him. I stood there until I couldn’t take the mosquito bites anymore and was driven inside. The clock ticked. Five minutes.

Ten.

Twenty minutes passed. Debut’s feathers twitched. Was that his consciousness slipping away?

Twenty-five.

As the thirtieth minute slid past, Debut flap flap flapped. My heart dropped. He was still alive and kicking. I texted my buddy to say, “And if it’s been 30 minutes and he still hasn’t passed out…?”

He responded with the flat-mouthed, one eyebrow raised emoji. “Slit it.”

Slit it? But he was still conscious. I didn’t have the ice water in my veins. Another of the methods I had run across was called cervical separation, vouched for as a humane method of euthanization by sources domestic and international. In layman’s terms, it’s neck dislocation. As I understand it, it’s basically a decapitation but inside. The spinal cord is ruptured which stops breathing, and the carotid artery and other blood vessels are ruptured which disrupts blood flow to the brain. With a steady, firm pull, one could feel the separation happen and know that the deed is done.

This is all well and fine on Google. Debut was still alive, gently swinging. I steeled my will and resolved myself to the act. This happens all over the world and has for millennia. Somewhere in the world, someone was briskly dislocating a chicken neck even now. You can do it, Nate. The ancestors are with you.

I pinched behind his neck, held his legs and body steady, turned the angle of his head back to align the spinal column, and applied pressure. My hands began separating. No fuss from the roo. They continued to separate. I think I’m actually doing this. More distance between my hands. How long is a chicken neck again? Further still. Surely I’m being pranked.

Flap flap flap.

I was a bad chicken chiropractor and a worse executioner. Them necks is stretchy, y’all. I suppose I expected his head to click off his neck like a hair piece from a LEGO character. Just a quick pop and it’s done. No such luck. This rooster had a neck like Stretch Armstrong had arms. I’m not sure my six-foot span would have been enough to do the job.

I realized in this moment that it wasn’t actually death that I was concerned with. I didn’t mind doing what needed doing. My concern, rather, was my own incompetence. You never know how “too tight” on toilet’s closet bolts is until you overtighten them and crack the porcelain. Once you get a feel for it by doing it wrong, once you feel the fixture give way under your hands, you suddenly know what it should feel like. I had never had this experience with chicken euthanasia. I was an apprentice that needed a journeyman to show me what to do. I didn’t mind killing if I knew that death was actually the outcome and not infliction of prolonged pain. But I didn’t have this confidence.

Alas, no journeyman was available and time was ticking. I reverted back to my first plan, hoping that he would eventually pass out and I could slit his unconscious throat.

Two hours now. Two hours upside down and Debut was still locking on to wood shaving and bugs and pellets with his eyes, stretching his plucked wings, plucky as ever. He truly was a survivor. Whatever was going to be done, it needed doing. This had gone on too long. My brother—who would house-sit for us while we were away and was, therefore, with me this entire time—made a suggestion.

“We’re really a couple of city boys, aren’t we? Y’know, Dad’s got a CO2 pellet gun. I can run and get it.” My parents lived close. And this would definitely do the job.

I nodded. “Get it.”

My dad has a Crosman Model 38T, a replica of the Smith & Wesson Model 10, that shoots pellets with a CO2 cartridge. It doesn’t use gunpowder and bullets but it can still do some serious damage. It would scramble Debut’s eggs without making a mess. My brother introduced me to the weapon and identified its features before asking me, “You wanna do it?”

I’d already tried playing balloon artist with his neck to no avail. Could I put a pellet in his brain?

“I think I ought to be the one.” Debut was my responsibility now.

I returned to the run, pistol in hand. I placed the barrel against the base of Debut’s skull. “Is this good?” I asked my brother. He gestured for a slightly deeper angle. I needed to put the pellet in the right spot the first time. I adjusted. He confirmed my placement. I cocked the hammer.

I pulled the trigger.

I’ll spare the details, but evidently I’d gotten it right in one go. I waited until all motion ceased, not noticing the three mosquitos that were exsanguinating me in that moment. I had never pulled a trigger or killed a chicken. “Two birds, one stone” comes to mind as being appropriate if slightly inaccurate. The deed was done.

A mound of dirt sits next to the chicken run in my backyard from a cut flower patch I’d dug earlier in the year. My brother and I each grabbed a shovel and put their blades in the red Georgia clay. He paused. A few moments later, Chopin’s “Funeral March” rang through the air. We laughed our asses off as we opened the earth a shovelful at a time, a moment of levity that juxtaposed beautifully with the heavy air that had been hanging around us for hours.

My eldest daughter witnessed all of this, by the way. From hanging Debut upside down to the final shot. She wants to live off-grid when she gets older and knows that this is the kind of thing she’ll have to do. I suggested that she take the dead rooster off the hook and place him in the hole. She seemed nonplussed.

“I-…I don’t know that I want to touch it.”

I understood. “I totally get it, baby. I didn’t want to do any of this. But if you want to get off-grid, this is gonna be your life. Go ahead and grab him.”

She took a deep breath and took hold of his feet, holding him out in front of her. “Dangit, he’s heavy.” He was only 3 or 4 pounds, but she’s only 10. She laid him in the ground and we all looked at him for a final moment. She asked, “Can I put the first dirt back?”

“Sure, sweetheart.” She lifted the shovel from the pile and hmphed it into the hole.

HURRrrng

We all stared at each other. The noise had come from the hole.

“Di-… Was th-… What?!” We couldn’t have anticipated what we’d heard. A muffled crow, the last bit of air in his lungs forced through his vocal cords, had pressed up from Debut’s chest as the Georgia clay pressed down on him. Asserting his dominance even from the grave. Announcing the rising of the sun even as his life’s sun set. What pluck.

I’m no Chloe Hope, so I don’t have a crystalline, beautifully articulated lesson from all of this. What I do have is a deepening sense that I have much to learn when it comes to living with the land. A sense of my own incompetence. I have on my right bicep a tattoo of Mickey Mouse standing on top of a pile of skulls, musical notes floating around his head, a broad smile spread under squinted eyes. I’ve always understood this through a Christian lens, as Christ joyfully trampling down death. But now I have an experience that indexes to it, not of joy, exactly, but at least of laughter in the face of mortality.

And so began the Marshall Family vacation.