Our now infamous household rule "If you kill it, you eat it," was enforced by me last week. In just a quick update with pictures, I thought that everyone would be interested to know that the chick has been consumed by the five year old who helped it meet its demise.
It's Just Dinner
To entice Frederick to eat the chick and to reduce the trauma of the day, I gave a speech about how "At the end of the day, it's chicken and maybe a little bit more tender than you are used to. Just eat it. It's dinner."
In the middle of all of this I actually talked to my high school ag teacher who has become a friend of the family. She received a message from me a couple of hours before I am sure sounding a bit frantic since I had never dressed a chicken before:
I have a question about dressing a chicken. It's also a parenting question. Call me back as soon as you get the message.
She said "That message piqued my interest to say the least."
After hearing the story she said, "That's fantastic. If you all have chicken, sit down and eat together and say 'Frederick, you gathered your own food today. Now let's eat."
He ate the chicken with no commentary, good or bad.
No Lasting Trauma
Just a few days ago we came home with six sale price chickens from Whole Foods. After the experience with seeing a chick dressed out, Frederick knew exactly what the carcass was sitting in the kitchen.
"Is that one of our chickens?"
"No," answered my mom. "It came from Whole Foods."
"Did it come in a cage or a box?"
"It was already dead."
"How did it get dead?"
"Someone slaughtered it so Whole Foods could sell it."
A few hours later he commented on how good the chicken dinner was.
The Purpose
This rule comes from our more general discussions of the food chain. I do not want this child to rebel in a few years over us having fed him "dead animals" all of his life. Eating animals is normal around here, but killing them for sport is not. Young boys with lots of energy tend to be a bit rough on animals and I mistakingly thought this rule would never have to be implemented. Enforcing the rule was momentarily traumatic but it appears that it served to reinforce the larger food chain message. And I will now never, ever face the question "why didn't you ever tell me we eat dead animals?" But I may also never escape the bit of notoriety that came as a result. "She really is crazy."
