Epilogue: I Ate Roo

When the trailer backed into the driveway, it was a long, violent rooster crow that pierced the quiet countryside, declaring that Something Wild Farm was open for business. Roo was big and angry and arrived on the farm with half a dozen hens and sawed-off spurs. Kay could only handle him with muck boots and the swing of an NFL kicker aiming for a sixty-yard field goal. But I kinda liked him.

Once Roo’s spurs grew back in and he made it his life goal to kill me, I wore the welts on my shins with pride. I’d pick him up and coddle him, then we’d look like a couple of Irish river dancers while he’d karate chop my ankles and I’d dodge around him until he’d get tired. He was aggressive with his girls, but also a good foreman. He’d scratch up some food and call them over; he’d keep them in order when they free ranged the woods; he’d curse the mere existence at the mere shadow of a living creature within a half-mile.

Kay hated him. I don’t blame her one bit. He was evil. Once, when I was on a long weekend somewhere, he escaped the coop and hid in the barn. She texted me a photo of his silhouette against the hay loft and you could have told me it was Pennywise the Clown, I would have believed you. Fortunately, she was able to call on a family friend to catch him with a fishing net and toss him back in the barn.

It was important to me that she was able to safely and happily care for the birds, so one day, when she was on a trip, I decided to send Roo to Hell. I had never killed a bird before but I’d been to a butchering day on a farm and observed. I also had a book with detailed instructions on how to do it. I picked Roo up and struggled to stick his head into the kill cone. Most birds go chill when you flip them upside down; Roo just got feisty. He managed to get his claws around the edge of the cone and push his head out of the hole at the bottom. Horror movie scene. I had to force him down and hold him until he got drowsy. He never quite did.

I sliced his throat with an old purple kitchen knife. It took a few tries to get him to go. I cried. I processed. I swore. My first kill. My buddy. I had two sawhorses and a chicken wire table set up, as well as some simmering water on a propane burner. I dipped him in and plucked his feathers off, tossing them into a bucket. I kept a few tail feathers for artsy posterity.

What’s interesting about my fluffy, cute, evil little friend is, once he was de-feathered, he looked an awful lot like something that comes on a styrofoam tray at the grocery store. I brought the carcass indoors and cut off the feet, fed them to the dogs. It began a ritual: every time I kill a bird, the dogs get the feet. It’s how we say goodbye to the bird. And how I get the dogs to leave me alone while I gut a bird. I followed my butcher book’s instructions, turning the pages with fingers covered in chicken blood and goo, and eventually I had passable whole chicken in the fridge.

A day later, though, I bagged Roo up and stuck him in the freezer. And there he sat. For two years.

I killed other chickens. Romeo the Rooster was also evil. He was a wicked king with a deformed paw, not an uncommon chicken deformity. He reminded me of James VI, who let his own mother, Mary Queen of Scots get beheaded. So I beheaded him. He was delicious. The most delicious thing I ever ate in my life. Vegetables and eggs and stone fruits from the backyard are amazing, but to take the life of something that walked this big, beautiful, green earth and consume its flesh is a magic consumption that cannot be matched by any mere leaf. I envy hunters who think nothing of hanging a venison off the back porch and polishing off a backstrap like it’s another day in the life.

Farm life came and went. Roo’s drumsticks stuck out from frozen elderberries and bags of green beans, mostly forgotten. Now and then I’d tell myself I’d get him into a slow cooker. I imagined making Roo tacos during Sugar Season. But every year my buddy Bill would show up for Maple Weekend and he’d pour Whisky Near’ups and we’d eat hot dogs steamed in sap. That’s the menu during Sugar Season, deal with it. Roo sat in the freezer so long, I imagined opening it and he’d be gone. I’d turn around and he’d be standing on the floor, covered in a halo of light, wearing a white robe. I would drop to my knees and weep for him. Fortunately, that never happened.

And then one day, all the farm animals were gone. The chickens were divvied up among local homesteaders. The sheep went to new pastures. I was trying to process it all while watching the weeds take over. I needed an old friend. And Roo was there for me. I took his freezer-burned body and thunked it into a slow cooker. I added salt and pepper and cayenne and chipotle and taco seasoning and olive oil and apple cider vinegar and lit that little demon up. Two days later, the spawn of Satan that was Roo lied in a puddle of fat and meat and bone inside a ceramic pot, waiting to be picked clean and devoured by the hungriest farmer boy (with nibbles for the dogs).

I went down to Heath’s and bought taco shells, shredded Cabot cheese. I had spring greens from Roots Too Farm. Some rice, candied jalapeños, sour cream, avocado, vaya con dios! Tacos were assembled. Roo and I sat a while, and then I ate him. The farm started with him, and it ended with him. That long, violent roar that split the blue sky into shatters is lodged somewhere in my gut now, and it will stay there forever....

One day while tending to the flock, I noticed one of Roo’s spurs had been broken off. It laid on the ground like an arrowhead, a casual artifact of a killing breed. I pocketed it and added it to my collection of feathers, rocks, shells, and dried flowers. In the movie Jurassic Park, Dr. Grant lets his cherished velociraptor claw drop to the ground from the tree he hides in with Tim and Lexi….but I’m keeping Roo’s spur. That is, until some mad billionaire genius clones him and he destroys everything we know and love. God, save us.