The day I took a life

0

THIS is a story about a barrier I would rather not break. But it had happened and I cannot turn back the clock to undo it. It was an experience I wished I never had to go through. I was not prepared for the ramifications that followed.

My mother had a knack for rearing fat broiler chickens. They were for producing eggs for daily consumption and meat for festive seasons. I remember following her to the market early in the mornings to buy young chicks.

Traders sold these furry yellow things by the roadside where they were confined in small wooden crates lined with straw and newspaper. She squatted beside the crates, inches away from the slow-moving traffic, looking for and selecting the active ones, which were sure signs they were healthy.

Female chicks were preferred for their ability to produce eggs and later for their meat. To identify their gender, she held each one in her palm and turned them over to look at their bottom. I had no idea what features indicated their gender. They all looked the same to me.

In those day, my mother slaughtered the chickens herself. I always thought it to be a cruel act. That was the reason I had an aversion to eating poultry of any kind when I was a kid. If I knew a chicken was to be killed that morning, I avoided going to the kitchen. Sometimes, it was difficult to stay away because I was made to help prepare the ingredients for cooking.

The times I had to witness what she did to the chicken were traumatising. With one foot immobilising the legs and one hand holding down the head, she plucked the soft feathers from its neck with the other hand. In one deft stroke, she drew a sharpened knife across the throat. That was the time when the chicken struggled the most. The sight never failed to make me queasy.

When I was 14, I participated in a Boy Scout’s Backwoods Competition. We were required to build our shelter from natural materials found in the jungle like bamboo and small tree trunks. We also had to cook food without using utensils with the main dish being chicken cooked the backwoods style.

I asked my mother for a chicken from her brood. She was concerned with how I was going to slaughter and clean the chicken, knowing how I disliked seeing her doing it each time, and especially when I had never done it before.

“It is easy,” I told her confidently. “I have seen you done it countless times.”

With that gung-ho spirit, I selected the fattest one from the coop. When it was time for the cooking competition, I took it down to the river together with a camping knife. Little did I realise seeing and knowing how it was done and doing it were two different things.

Alas, my knife was so blunt it did not even make a nick on the skin. The chicken struggled even more and shrieked in terror, realising her impending fate. Time was running out. We were supposed to present our cooked food soon. I pondered over what to do with the chicken, whether to let it go or snuff the life out of it by other means.

I finally decided to drown it. For a bird its size, it was very strong. I had a hard time trying to hold it fully submerged in the water. It flapped it wings desperately. After what felt like hours, although it was only a few minutes, the struggle weakened and eventually ceased.

All was suddenly still and quiet except for the sound of flowing water. I held the carcass in my hand with my hair and clothes fully drenched. At that very instance, I was overwhelmed by a great sadness. My heart was sore and my eyes were wet. There I was, standing knee-deep in the river, emotionally and physically drained holding the body of a creature I had just killed in cold blood.

I was guilt-ridden for many years after that. The time when I was struggling in the swimming pool right after I hit the bottom and fractured my spine, apart from the vision of my parents flashing across my mind, I also saw images of the chicken I had forcibly drowned.

“So this is how it felt during its last moments,” I thought. It was a horrible feeling of fear, anxiety and panic knowing death was just a tick away. Fortunately for me, my life was spared but that feeling and fear for that brief time when I thought I was going to die and the realisation the chicken must have felt the same way haunted me for a long time afterwards.

As for the chicken, it died for nothing. We only had a faint idea of how to cook it but not remove the feathers and take out its entrails. Since we were short of time, we wrapped it in mud and threw it into the embers for it to cook. That was how the book on backwoods cooking I borrowed from the library said it should be done.

The judges were repulsed looking at what we presented. It went straight into the garbage dump. That was such a waste of a good chicken and one that had caused me so much grief for many years later. I later found out the other groups used dressed chicken they bought from the market.

Thinking about that incident now, I still feel remorseful. Taking a life is not easy no matter how small the creature is. Ironically, for most of us, we do not feel an iota of guilt for eating meat as long as we are not the one doing the slaughtering.