[Warning: Graphic description of preparing chickens below]
I may have failed to mention that my new host father raises chickens. I have gotten used to the smell, and I no longer think they are the ugliest creatures imaginable, but I am only now starting to become involved in the process of preparing them. I fetch water, or tend the wood stove, but a few days ago I got to help 'peel' them. It was the day before New Year's Eve, and he had sold fifteen chickens to people (and restaurants) in anticipation of a feast to welcome in the new year.
The first step in this process is to kill the chickens. This is done further away from the house (across the ditch where all the sewage flows) and the chickens are placed upside down into a vise. They don't tend to protest, until after the head is cut cleanly off. Then the body starts jerking every which way, and if the wings were not secured it would be very difficult to keep hold of the bird. After a while it stops moving, and blood stops gushing. The aftermath was pretty gruesome, fifteen decapitated chicken corpses twitching in a rusty wheelbarrow with a few large dollops of blood splattered around. Next the chickens are hoisted one by one out of the wheelbarrow by their scaly feet and dropped unceremoniously into a giant pot of hot water. The water cannot be boiling, because then the chicken would get cooked, but it can't get too cold either or else the feathers would still be unpluckable, so my host father tends to the flames while my host mother and the neighbor put on aprons and stand behind a long wooden table near the chicken enclosures. This entire process, I should add, takes place in full view of the other 300 chickens that await a similar fate.
After about thirty seconds in the hot water the chicken is pulled out (again by the feet) and brought to the table. Then my host mother and the neighbor begin peeling handfuls of feathers off the soggy birds. This is where I came in (after fetching random implements and beverages). Pulling the feathers off a warm, wet, dead chicken is not terribly difficult, what is difficult is pulling all the feathers off. The back and belly are easily de-feathered, the wingtips required knives or pliers. But turning the chicken back over one is surprised to find hundreds of little feathers, almost like hairs, springing up from what was previously a fully plucked chicken. I saved the neck for last, touching bloody feathers was almost too much.
Next I got to watch my neighbor clean one chicken, but then my host mother sent me inside to make more coffee. The most surprising thing I learned about chickens is that their feet are soft and fleshy, not sheathed in hard yellow scales. The smell was overpowering, a mix between wet dogs and mold, and it was hard to get the stench off my hands, even with veterinarian's alcohol. The grilled chicken we had for dinner was excellent.
[Addendum] Today two chicks had to be killed because they were diseased, and aside from never growing into chickens would infect all the others. After they wandered around out of the pen for a while the puppies took and interest in them, chewed on their wings, and played tug-of-war with them. To 'put them out of their misery' my host mom picked up a long 2x4, flipped one chick on its back, and dropped one end of the board on its head. I was completely unprepared for this, although I was able to watch the second time, and it was pretty awful.
