My boss slaughters his egg chickens either every fall or every other fall depending on how old they are when he gets them, on the logic that the personal hassle and carbon foot print of getting chickens to lay eggs in the winter is not worth it. As he was explaining this recently, a newer co-worker asked how he hid that from his children. And she’s new, which means she’s never had the delightfully goth experience of watching my boss’s two charming dimpled daughters who are ALSO deeply unsentimental farm children respond to you with utterly withering scorn if you ask them something like, as I once did, “oh, what’s that chicken’s name?” The oldest daughter, all of four years old at the time, told me in a firm, Wednesday-Adams-talking-to-a-moron voice, “We’re going to eat them. They’re not pets.”
My boss, who is gentle and does not respond to people with scorn when they ask innocent questions, instead told her, “Oh, we’re pretty open with them about the facts of life. They know where babies come from and where chickens go.”
Anyway, that phrase haunts me and I wanted to share it with you. It sounds like some 19th century grandma saying.
