Ba-gok!

It’s true what they say, kids grow up fast. One second they’re little blankie-bundled burritos, you turn around and they’re underfoot demanding that you make them a burrito. "With smashed beans and cheese, Daddy!" Turn around again and they’re making burritos for other people at the local burrito joint, and secretly snot-rocketing into the burritos of rude customers. Except my kids are still in the single digits so I haven’t gotten to that third turn-around yet. But I suspect it goes something like that.

But you know who really grows up fast? Chickens! A few weeks ago, my wife and I became the proud, um owners? Parents? Guardians? of a gang of baby chicks. As I type this, an almost completed chicken coop sits in our backyard, a project which I must finish before they reach full size, which at their current rate of growth will be any minute now. Seriously, I wake up in the morning and they’re bigger than they were when I kissed them good night. For the time being, they live in our garage, contained within the cage that was once our youngest child’s crib. Yes, it’s one of those evil drop-sides, but I don’t think it poses much danger to its current occupants.

The chickens were an instant hit with the boys. “Wanna see the chicks!” is a constant refrain around our house. On the first day we had them, my two year old snatched one up by its fuzzy little head as if he wanted to hug it and squeeze it and call it George. Thankfully, it lived to cheep another day. 

We have fresh eggs in our future, but that’s not all. “After they’re done laying eggs,” my wife said, “we might have some....decisions to make.” It was a dinner time conversation. “I mean, I guess we could just keep them as pets forever, or we could--”

 “No!” I said. I blurted it out without thinking, a total kneejerk reaction to what I knew she was getting at. It’s not that I have some profound bond with the chickens, but the thought of actually killing any of them brought out the squeamish in me.

Were we eating chicken that night? I can’t remember.

But I thought about it a little. From whence comes my reluctance to bring the axe down with my own hand? I eat chicken on a fairly regular basis, so by one means or another I’m contributing to chicken death already. Why not do the deed myself? In a sense, it’s putting my money where my meat-eating mouth is. And perhaps there’s a little lesson for my little dudes in there somewhere, something about how our food actually comes from somewhere and doesn’t just appear out of nowhere and the circle of life and, I don't know, stuff. I looked across the table at my wife.

“We may need a chopping block.”