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When I Couldn’t Eat Meat
Two stories twenty years apart
The first one involved a chicken. We bought six day-old chicks for our kids as pets. They had to look after them, let them out of the chook pen after school to have a peck around in the lawn and put them away to roost. We had three layers who gave us fresh eggs and three “meat” ones. Rowan named his Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner and Keeley named hers Lellow, Chix and Tweet. Anyway, the meat chickens were ready for eating. Jamie and the boys killed them, plucked them and froze them. A few months later, I cooked one for dinner. Keeley hadn’t even noticed they’d been missing for months. She said, “ This is the best chicken I’ve ever had.” I said nothing. But do you think I could take one bite of that chicken? Nope!
The next one happened more recently. On the morning of Rowan and Maria’s wedding, I was awakened by a pig screaming and squealing. I thought what the hell is going on? There was a poor little pig who was literally fighting for his life for what seemed like hours but was probably at least 15 or 20 minutes. I couldn’t stand to watch. Stacey woke up and saw what was happening and started crying loudly which woke Rowan up who started laughing at Stacey and…
