As they will on occasion, the meat department was running low on some items.
Flank steak
Fresh bratwurst
Whole chickens
Figures.
Our search for a whole chicken to cook and consume reminded my mom of something my dad talked about doing when he was a kid.
A little background first. My dad grew up in a small house in a small camp on the outskirts of a small town on a small island in a small state in the middle of a very large ocean. If you guessed Rhode Island, go back and study your U.S. geography.
For fun and adventure, my dad and his siblings would experiment with the digestive systems of the various animals they would find around the house or neighborhood. One day (I can only imagine what inspired him to think of it) he fed some kite string to a chicken, then excitedly waited to see how long it would take to exit said chicken.
And, when one experiment is a success, shouldn't it be followed up by another?
Taking the end of the string that had not yet fully exited one chicken, he fed it to another. I guess chickens don't have much of a gag reflex, since by the end of his experiment he had 4 chickens "strung" together on the single piece of string.
For those of you who are having a hard time grokking this in your minds eye, it must have looked something like this...
I never found out if he tried to "pull" the string out of the four-chicken-string-kabob.
6 comments:
it's a good thing not many members of PETA read your posts!
Hi Kurt,
I read your Blog all the time and appreciate your skills as a writer. It really is very informative and keeps me in laughing. I also enjoy living in a small town in a small State.
Todd's Dad,
Ron Brunelle
Seth - just wait until tomorrows post. Hope you're not sick of hunting stories, cuz it's deer season out here in Okie land and the papers are filled with kill stories.
Ron - glad to have you join the yastm family. You should start your own blog and keep the rest of us informed on the goings on up north. BTW, congrats on your newest family addition.
It's been a long time since I've chuckled so hard.
Ah the innocence of an inquisitive mind. I've heard of high fiber diets to keep one clean. But flossing? That's priceless.
My dad use to steal chickens from farmers in a simular fashon. He would sew corn onto a string and throw it across the yard the chicken would then swallow the kernels whole. My dad would then reel the pullet in and wring its neck. He would sometime do this as the farmer was feeding the chickens. It would look like on of the chickens was going after a stray kernel.
Ahh, the wringing of the chicken neck.
Some say it's a sweeter sound than the ringing of the Christmas bells.
My Father-in-law tells me of the days when he used to watch his mother grab two chickens at a time -- one in each hand.
Then she'd walk around the yard, swinging them in the air like rope lassos, until their "necks were wrung" and they were ready for "pluck'n and gutt'n."
But I like the idea of chicken fishing with corn kernel bait. Reminds me of what my Dad taught me to do with the big bumblebees and a roll of thread, during lazy summer afternoons in Oahu.
We'd catch the big, slow black and purple bumble bees, gently coax the stingers out of them, cut them off, lasso them with the thread and let them fly around the yard.
They would usually live for a few hours, flying and pulling at their tether, before exhaustion took it's toll on the little beasties.
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