I Feel like Chicken Tonight

Yesterday I stopped at the grocery store to get a chicken.

My nose detected the aroma immediately as I entered the building, and I instinctively went about tracking it down. I slowly stalked my way through the cereals, avoiding the Quaker's watchful eye, before long arriving at a small, well-lit clearing. It was there that I spotted the fowl, warm in their roost, each heedlessly ignorant of any potential predators. At a short distance I observed their clustered formation with keen interest, deliberating exactly how I would play this favorite game of mine. Then, as if by reflex, my body shot forward, enabling me to snatch one of the plump birds with one swift movement. There was no struggle to speak of.

I find that markets and groceries are such conventional places these days. Nearly everything is sprayed with pesticides, comes vacuum-packed, or is crammed into some eye-catching package, designed to make your children scream until you buy it for them.

When it comes to meat, though, things are basically as they've always been. The animals are inspected before slaughter, and then dismembered and sectioned accordingly by the butcher's blade.

But I think the pre-cooked chickens they sell are the most fascinating items. It's such a simple animal to prepare. The head is lopped off, the feathers and guts removed; then, after being impaled on a spit, it broils slowly over an open flame, almost exactly as it would have been done thousands of years ago.

Devouring it is also primal experience. You begin by ripping the skin, fat and tender flesh directly from bird's brittle carcass, hastily gobbling it as you go. Eventually you are forced to put down your utensils (assuming you were even using them in the first place) and begin poking between each rib with bare fingers to grasp the elusive meat. When you are through, all that is left is a glistening skeleton. The chicken has served its purpose in serving you.