We were waiting for our burritos to come up at the neighborhood taco truck when we noticed a curious business operating out of a van parked next door.   It turns out that every Saturday some local Vietnamese farmers load their chicken coop into the back of their van and park on the corner of Martin Luther King Wy and Othello St. They vend live hens, cocks and turkeys, leaving the neck-wringing up to their grateful patrons.  Jonas wanted to take a peek just so he could show Bentley the furry fowl, but I had other designs.  I started eating meat six years ago after a 20 year hiatus.  I decided when I was a small child and my father slaughtered my beloved pet cow, Slobber that meat just wasn’t for me.  In my early 20’s I started relaxing my rules, first with the introduction of fish, then chicken, beef, and just in the last couple of months, pork- the final frontier.  I still have huge reverence for animals and I really appreciate meat when I eat it, but I’ve always been a “take the bull by the horns” kind of girl, and I feel that buying a nicely-packaged disembodied chicken breast at Whole Foods is sort of a copout.  If I’m going to fully embrace this whole meat thing, I should be comfortable going from farm to table, right? 

To make a long story short, we drove home with a live chicken pecking her way around my trunk.  I posted a quick video on facebook of the chicken purchase and asked my friends if anyone had any experience with the inevitable next step.  I was shocked at the squeamishness of many folks who I know to eat meat on a daily basis.  It really reaffirmed what I was doing- if the animal is going to give their life for my pleasure, the least I can do is be able to stomach the process, and if I cannot, perhaps I don’t belong amongst the carnivorous denizens after all. 

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