Entry 5

Bright red splatter against the cold, hard, stainless steel backdrop.  Blood flows in a steady stream out of the main arteries in the neck of the young rooster.  The steady hum of the generator in the background is disrupted by his violent kicking.  Shaking the shiny slaughter apparatus, the whole earth seems to tremble.  Like a twisted version of minimalist art, fresh blood droplets land on top of older blood, erratically layering coat upon coat of the demented paint.

I turn my gaze downward to my hand, holding the knife.  The knife that slit the throat in one clean, seamless, purposeful motion.  It took a second, maybe two, to render lifeless the chicken, which just a few days prior I had taken food and water to.  I had helped this chicken live, and now I made it die.  I stare at my hand almost in disbelief.  Yet it doesn’t shake, doesn’t falter at all, it’s as steady as if I had merely chopped an apple in half.  It’s as if my brain can’t process what my limb has just done.  

I am officially an animal killer, separate from the majority of meat-eating Americans who generally let others take care of the life-to-death stage in an anonymous, far-away facility.  Meat arrives in the fridge packaged in neat and tidy parcels—fresh, frozen, or precooked—very few cuts resemble the actual animal from which it came.  Those omnivores are killers too, just in a more round-about, distant way.

I move to the next cone on the line.  Sue retrieves my second victim and places him upside-down, his neck sliding through the small opening at the bottom. 

“Remember to keep breathing,” she says.  

One solid, determined swipe of the blade.  The minimalist painter adds another layer to her canvas.  Another bird I had cared for dies at my hand.  Down the line.  Rooster three, four, and five.  Each time I feel less appalled, hear less commotion from the kicking aftershocks, feel less cruel, and somehow seem more human again.  I can’t tell if the forest surrounding me is silent or not.  The white noise from the generator masks any observable change.

It’s the smell that overpowers everything.  It sticks with me.  I can’t shake it; it’s in my hair, in my nose, clung to my skin and clothing.  The smell of fresh blood, of recent death pervading the air.  I am a meat-eater.  I’ve now paid my full karmic price.