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No really, I shot the rooster. My in-laws had promised that I could blast the nasty animal that would wake me up every morning at 4 a.m. during my visits to Oregon. Trust me, this was a humanitarian killing. You should see the happy beaks on the otherwise mauled hens who shared a pen with him, their feathers scratched off their back by the randy bugger. He could have had some intriguing hen-on-hen action but no, he had to content himself with being, well, a cock.
It was somewhat of a test. I married into a family of hunters and never felt quite happy with the idea of killing things myself. Happy to eat the moose burgers once someone else had done the nasty business of shooting and gutting. Shooting an ugly animal, rather than, say, Bambi, seemed to be a good way to figure out if I could deal with the process. Countless sleepless mornings had given me enough incentive. I met with some folks for breakfast Friday morning before flying out and told them I was going to shoot the rooster. They thought it was an idomatic Northwestern phrase for having too much fun, as in, "Boy, I really shot the rooster last night."
But the rooster make these dreadful bleating noises as Mike, Kim's Dad, pulled it out out of the coop. "Please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me," it said in Chickenese. Then, it stood there, without moving. It didn't fly away. It looked at me with its beady chicken eyes.
So I shot it. What was I supposed to do? I don't know what's worse than being a chicken (a yellow dog?) but not shooting it would have made me one, whatever it is.
It was a profoundly uninspiring experience. I hit it in the neck and feathers flew. Given that it had stood stock still maybe 20 feet away, it wasn't much sport. It didn't even try and run. Chicken Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps. The worst came next. It twitched, violently. So I shot it again.
It carried on twitching. A thin trickle of blood oozed down its beak. We hung it from a tree to see if a bear would eat it. That wasn't my idea and I'm not sure it made much sense but I'm still at the stage of deferring to the folks who actually live in the country. Meanwhile, the hens had a party and laid four eggs.
I object. You clearly had no casus belli with the rooster, for, while you may have had a just cause (rooster was henpecking) you did not have a right intent (killing rooster just so you could sleep a bit longer, in effect punishing rooster for its nature).
Frankly, it would have been better if you had had a right intent but no just cause. Then at least you could have stood tall next to Bush and Blair.
A final point, I daresay you did not use proportionate force. I would have loved it to see you go at it mano a mano with the rooster, perhaps with razor blades attached to your ears.
Posted by: Stefan on October 7, 2003 12:40 PMoh my oh my. well done. seriously, i mean it. i wouldn't have had the guts. wasn't that a shotgun, though? wouldn't it make more of a mess?
i'm all for honesty in the kitchen. i feel pretty bad when i handle a supermarket chicken after i've taken it home, when i wash it and stuff it, etc. poor chicken, i think. and then i resolve that this poor animal's death shall not be in vain, godammit, i'm going to make the best roast chicken the world has ever seen, and enjoy it too. then its spirit shall be comforted by the small good that will have come from the violent end the poor animal faced. it's a bit like how certain indian tribes worshipped the manitou, or something similar, of their slain prey before eating it.
except. . . you murdering bastard, you didn't eat it!!!
Posted by: eurof on October 7, 2003 02:55 PMSo, the rooster, in its youth, sometimes groped hens. I bet, given rooster memory, it can't even remember most of the gropings, but now would have realised (if you hadn't shot it), that groping hens in general is wrong, and would have apologized to those hens that it had groped, which weren't very many of them as far as it didn't remember. It's tough being a big, strutting hen, especially when your latest roles force you to puff out your chest to mime pregnancy and make dreadful bleatring noises as if giving birth.
Posted by: Charles on October 7, 2003 03:00 PMYes Charles, but then the chicken would become governor of California. Is that what you really want?
Posted by: jame on October 7, 2003 03:32 PMOverall, I'm just glad it didn't end up with the rooster dragging Matty out of the coop by his neck, all the hens clucking applause at the stunt.
Posted by: charles on October 7, 2003 06:22 PMUnlikely. Remember, I was the only one truly in posessions of mass chickstruction. Roosterboy had some pretty nasty spurs on his legs but when push came to shove, he didn't use them. Afterwards, Mike cut the spurs off, presumably so they wouldn't be able to ambush me on the road between Tikrit and Baghdad, errr, I mean, as a souvenir.
Posted by: Matthew on October 7, 2003 06:26 PMAfter drawing my mouse pointer across the second and third pictures above, I'm wondering if people would feel differently about this act realising it may have been a hate crime. Certainly, the term used to describe the rooster's orientation in the jpeg moniker is politically incorrect, suggesting prejudice. And why mention it at all, if not to revel in it?
That very same orientation also leads one to think that the hen-abuse was unlikely to be at the claws of the rooster. Perhaps, instead, the rooster was a dupe, shot for another's crime. Another, who wished to cover his own tracks.
Who, I ask you, had means, motive and opportunity for the shooting? The evidence is clear, it is in green and red and blue pixels before us, ladies and gentlemen. We can see from the stills that the hen's head jerks *back* as the impact hits, as if shot from the front. Not forward, as if shot from the forest or trees above. And who stood on the grassy knoll in front as the rooster strutted by? Who, and armed with lethal force? I fear there is a bestialist amongst us, one capable of heinous crimes, and one not even moral enough, decent enough, to eat the evidence.
Posted by: Charles on October 7, 2003 06:42 PMthe claw marks on the hens are not necessarily consistent with a human sexual assault. let's use occam's razor here. the incidence of homosexual love in the roosetr community is low. if, then "roosterpoof" was a documented heterosexual rooster who had left the marks of his passion on the hens in his care -- and being a little robust in lovemaking is not a crime among chickens, then the evidence points in a far more disturbing direction.
so why did matthew refer to the victim as a homosexual rooster when he wasn't one? perhaps the rooster had a homosexual episode. how would matthew know about this? remember he is known as "nancy boy" in professional circles (i can't link to the archived memefirst posting: perhaps someone else would be so kind). we can combine this with a little "displacement" on matthew's part, a fairly typical phenomenon when cross-species sexual predators are confronted with their crimes - " the goat liked it; she loves me!"
do you see where we are going now? the motive was the timeless one: that of a jilted lover, told the affair could not continue. a crime passionelle. why did he NOT eat the rooster? i think because he couldn't eat the evidence. it was pre-stuffed, and i'm not talking sage and onion here.
Posted by: eurof on October 7, 2003 07:43 PMThe rooster's orientation? It was blown to bits and so was oriented all over the place. This was not a homosexual rooster. I think it was Charles who first raised that possibility. The rooster wasn't wearing a red t-shirt, either. The rooster's coopmates all laid eggs, suggesting strongly that they are of the female persuasion. Of course, the fact of it being homosexual, presumably latently, is neither here nor there, especially seeing as the rooster is now here and there.
Posted by: Matthew on October 7, 2003 07:54 PMAlso, why would Occam have attacked the Strassels' hens with his razor?
Posted by: Matthew on October 7, 2003 07:55 PMYou are blathering, Matthew. Your stork is cock and bull. It was *you* who put the orientation of said chicken into play, *you* who pulled the trigger, *you* who brutally murdered your lover and/or competitor in love. I have never seen a clear case of fowl play. J'Accluck!
Posted by: Charles on October 7, 2003 08:08 PMOh, now I realise what you're all banging on about. This is because I saved the photo under the name "roosterpoof." I am slow. But you are wierd. It's "poof" as in bang, as in exploding, as in going up in smoke, not "poof" as in homosexual or, for that matter, footstool.
Posted by: Matthew on October 7, 2003 10:21 PMthat would be "pouf" for the footstool, matthew, and you know it. you're desperately trying to lead us up the garden path.
even your choice of words there, "bang", and "banging" is interesting, and incriminating. come on, admit it. did you bang the rooster?