The Death of Willow
Chicken Stories Part 1
I am not a religious person. But I just had a deep religious experience eating a chicken. No it is not about how good it tastes.

Willow is a Welsummer chicken. We got him together with six other baby chicks in May shortly after we moved to Oregon to start a permaculture homestead. The first day in his new home, I was worried about him because he wasn’t drinking like the other chicks. I dipped his beak into the water and my husband Doug put colored pebbles in there to attract his attention. It didn’t work. Fortunately by the next day, he started to drink and we breathed a sigh of relief.
When they were 4 months old, we moved them into a mobile coop outside. On their first night they were nervous, not knowing where to sleep. Doug and I got into their coop and sat with them as dusk fell. They slowly came to us, getting on our lap and shoulder, I guess deciding that that was how they would sleep that night. It was an incredible bonding experience for us with the birds, and for us with each other, sharing a magical moment. After a while, we gently carried them into the coop and closed the door. We waited and peaked in and saw them jumping onto their new perch one by one, jostling for position until finally settling down to sleep. We walked back into the house holding hands and smiling. What a wondrous day.

As Willow grew up, we realized that she and the other Welsummer were both boys not girls. We were so disappointed because we were so looking forward to having eggs with deep red shells. I renamed the other one Wilbur but did not rename Willow. In the back of my mind, I had already decided to cull him. Two roosters are too many when there are only five hens. The hens will have a terrible time being mounted too frequently and getting injured by them. Willow has terrible eyesight. He can’t see the grains I throw on the ground as treat. And he is developmentally much slower than Wilbur — being smaller and not knowing how to crow months after Wilbur has been crowing. I didn’t want bad eyesight and slow growth genes in our future broods. So Willow has to go.

But there is a problem. Doug does not want to kill or eat any animal on our farm. We discussed this at length and I respect his decision. I am different. I don’t enjoy killing animals but if we are eating chicken, then I feel I have to undergo the unpleasantness of killing them. It just feels more honorable that way. Letting someone else do the butchering so I can eat meat without experiencing how the animal has suffered feels wrong to me. Doug respects my decision too and says he will not stand in my way. But neither will he help or eat it. We left it at that for quite a while. I watched some videos on how to butcher a chicken but was hesitant because I wasn’t sure I would do it correctly.

Then some friends came to visit and stayed for a few days. They offered to show me how to do it. I jumped at the chance.
Our friend does not like killing chicken either and had to psych herself up to do it. In the morning she went out by herself to meditate. Then she went into the chicken enclosure to talk to Willow. When Willow was relaxed and right next to her, she grabbed it quickly and cradled it in her arms. We found a large box in the barn, put straws in it, put Willow in there and closed the lid. Chicken will go to sleep when put in the dark. However, Wilbur kept crowing for a while and Willow answered his call a few times. I guess Wilbur was missing his mate. But Willow quickly quiet down and must have dozed off.
We then boil a big pot of water, and set up an outdoor table. When we were ready our friend brought Willow out of the box and swaddled her in a think blanket. This is to stop her from flapping and reduce her struggling. She showed me how to feel for the trachea on the neck. On either side of the trachea are the artery and the vein. I held Willow firmly between my legs with the bucket underneath. We stroked and soothed her for a while. I silently told Willow that we are going to kill her for food, thanked her, and said my goodbye. My friend then pull Willow’s neck out and with a sharp knife made two cuts to sever the artery and the vein. The artery did not sever after the first cut and she had to do it again. I felt Willow’s struggles and held her tight. Then the blood flowed into the bucket — dark blood from the vein and red blood from the artery. Willow is now in her death throes and struggled more. She almost wiggled free from my grip but I held tight. After less than a minute, she gave one last big jerk and became limp. I felt her die.
Several years ago when we were still living in San Francisco, Doug and I went walking with friends in Crystal Lake. A squirrel fell out of the tree and landed right in front of us. It must have been very old or sick for it did not get up from the ground and run off. It just lay there, panting slightly, a look of terror or bewilderment in its eyes. We looked at it, not knowing what to do. It was obviously not doing well. We wondered if it had broken its legs, if we should help it get up. Then it stopped breathing. One moment it was alive. The next it was dead. The light went out of its eyes. The troubling thing was, it felt as if a slice of time was cut from this process. We were fully aware the second before of its aliveness, and also fully aware the second after of its deadness. But that moment between life and death was surreal. It was as if time froze, but at the same time fast-forwarded. It was as if the transition between life and death is so momentous that we were not able to perceive its unfolding. We could not perceive the moment death took hold; only the carcass after death has done its work. That moment stayed with us for a long time, and we occasionally talked about it, about the incomprehensible mystery of death, about how it was right in front of our eyes but we could not see it.

I perceived death today. I perceived it because I was in bodily contact with Willow the whole time. Holding her tight, I felt the precise moment when tension left her body. It filled me with awe and sadness.

I invited my friends to stay for dinner but something urgent came up back home and they had to leave. I decided to still cook her tonight in the most elaborate recipe I know.
For the stuffing I boiled and peeled our chestnuts, dice them with garlic, celery, and shallots; and fried it with coconut oil and breadcrumbs. I then sliced up two onions and put them inside a pressure cooker with a cup of chicken stock. Then I put Willow into the pressure cooker on top of the onions and cooked at high pressure for 40 minutes. This is to tenderize the meat. When it was done, I baked it in the oven at 475 degrees F for 15 minutes to crisp the skin.


When the thigh quarter is finally served on the plate, I realize I could not eat it without first offering a prayer of thanksgiving. Then, the only way I could eat it was with deep gratitude and humility. As I chewed, I noticed its wonderful flavor and toughness and was glad that he had plenty of free ranging exercise. Memories of Willow came to me, memories of his kooky little run when he rushed up to the fence in the morning when I go out to feed them, of him being bullied by the hens, of him pecking my fingers when I fed him blackberries because he couldn’t see well. And I felt connect to him and to all our chicken like I never felt before. He is in me now and I felt I was also in him and in them. I felt the connectedness of all life. Even the vegetables I was eating looked different. I see them not as a separate thing, but as one living thing feeding on another, on and on in the cycle of life, each one nourishing and becoming the other. We are all connected not just by love but also by our physicality, our biology, our mode of existence. I recall the Christian story of Christ dying for us so that we may live. Just like Willow dying for me so that I may eat him as sustenance. Doug must know what I was going through because he went to the piano just as I was about to start eating, and played Messiaen’s “Je dors, mais mon Coeur veille” (“I sleep but my heart takes care”) from the Vingt Regards Sur L’Enfant Jesus. He told me afterwards that this is the music played during the Eucharist where in the Catholic tradition the bread is transmogrified to the flesh of Jesus. I ate in silence and in deep gratitude.