goodbye george

**WARNING** - this post has some pictures of dead/dying poultry (but not too bloody).  if you are a vegetarian (Janet) or otherwise easily disturbed, consider yourself warned.

have you ever been in a place like ace hardware or a feed store around Easter?  they always have adorable chicks and ducklings for sale.  sometimes they're even dyed pretty easter colors.  our friend drew happened to be at one of these places shortly after the holiday and was talked into adopting 4 such baby animals.  they were free and cute and he thought it would be nice to have fresh eggs, so why not?  well, at that stage, it was nearly impossible to tell that all 4 chicks were actually going to become roosters.  he named them all george.  george(s) were loud.  they liked to chase the chickens around and gang up on a hen and do unspeakable things to her.  they were basically annoying bullies. 

so one day, justin and drew decided it was time for george to say goodbye.  they made a little noose and laid george across a stump.

it was quick work with the hatchet.

did you know that expression "running around like a chicken with it's head cut off" is a true story?  see the head on the stump on the left.  then check out the body in the upper right hand corner.  it flew over there!  by itself!  HEADLESS!!  it totally freaked me out.  it freaked the dogs out too.  luckily there were no small children present to witness the slayings.  because if i were a kid and saw this, it might give me nightmares.  who am i kidding?  i'm no kid and it does give me nightmares.

we ate george for dinner that night.  they looked beautiful when they were all cooked up and the smell was mouth-watering.  but i couldn't get this image out of my head. 

that, combined with telling the kids that george flew away made it a teensy bit difficult to enjoy eating our meal.  but it was pretty nice not waking up to incessant cock-a-doodle-dooing the next morning...  ;)