Looking for blogworthy angles, I am always using Google to find recent articles mentioning "North Minneapolis." Sometimes I find out that fire has claimed a house on North Minneapolis Street in Wichita, Kansas, but usually I turn up useful news articles that inform me and help me dig up information to inform others.
On October 20, I turned up a news article about the urban "backyard chicken" trend and how the trend is fading and chickens are turning up at shelters, click here.
Shelters. For chickens!!!!!
I live in North Minneapolis, but I grew up as rural as can be and let me tell you, SHELTERS for CHICKENS is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard, unless the shelter in question has a little figurine of Colonel Sanders on the pointy part of the roof...
...and a delicious fried smell emanating from the inside.
Listen up, city slickers. Here's how it works with chickens.
You keep them while they are laying eggs. When they stop laying eggs, you whack their heads off with an axe, stick them in a pot of boiling water, pull off the feathers, then cut them open and rip out the guts. Most of the guts are no good, like the lungs and intestines. But the heart, liver, and gizzard are pretty good and you can eat those. And, yes, they do "run around like a chicken with their head cut off" or at least they flop around for a few minutes after decapitation.
I've seen it more times than I could possibly count. My family PROCESSED POULTRY for god sakes, among many other pungent and intensely rural tasks. I think I once killed 100 chickens in an afternoon, by myself, at about the age of 12. I thank god I grew up this way. It gave me an incredibly strong stomach, for one thing.
But I digress.
There is no other sensible and economic way to keep chickens than to eat them when the chickens are done laying eggs. If you want a pet, get a cat, a dog or better yet a goldfish, which require little effort and expense. If you want fresh eggs, then get yourself some chickens but DO NOT BECOME EMOTIONALLY INVOLVED WITH THE CHICKENS because you will have to KILL THEM and EAT THEM.
If you can't embrace your role as a superior life form fit to eat other life forms, then don't get chickens in the first place. Learn how to make cheese out of cashews or some other kind of intensely vegetarian hobby but DO NOT GET CHICKENS. Buy your eggs at the store and pay a little more for free range eggs (like I insist upon doing when I buy eggs) but DO NOT GET CHICKENS.
Now, I hope I have cleared this matter up for the many city slickers who enjoy this blog. Back to our regularly scheduled struggle to revitalize the neighborhood.
11 comments:
Shelters for chickens? File that under "white people problems". That's what happens when they let vagitarians keep chickens in the city.
This "shelter chicken" issue is an embarrassment to the neighborhood revitalization movement. But I'm willing to help out by chopping the head off any chicken that needs to get whacked, as long as the chicken's owner will do the rest of the work, clean it and so forth. If they can do everything but the killing part, well, just like when it comes to dealing with bat infestation I am pretty much a killer on call.
Where is that chicken shelter? I'd like to "adopt" some of those fryers. lol
It seems like a lot of work just to get a free live chicken, but I suppose you could put the whole thing on YouTube and achieve a form of infamy.
You leave those chickens alone!
I am a member of PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals, and will not tolerate chicken shelters.
I sure do miss the King of Wings.
Johnny, go easy on the bats. Unlike young Nothside thugs, they mean no harm and there are easy ways to get rid of them. Too bad there are no easy ways to get rid of the gangbangers and their wannabe followers. sigh.
People Eating Tasty Animals...yeah, been there done that. not original anymore.
In regard to the bats, I quite agree with you. In fact, when called upon to rid people of bats flying around in their houses, I have made efforts to capture the bats rather than kill them. Bats eat their weight in bugs daily when they are not hibernating. They also face threats in the form of the "white nose fungus" and other threats that could drive some species extinct.
But when there's a bat flying around in a house and the bat has to go, well, Johnny is the man to call. I'll try to take the bat alive but I'm not so squeamish I won't kill the bat if necessary. There was a kid in North Minneapolis who had to get RABIES SHOTS due to picking up a bat when he was just a toddler. I never wrote about it on my blog but, well, it happened.
OMG -the King of Wings. I can't find any picture of him on the web, but he was the soul of Minneapolis, IMO. I did find this old story about him http://www.onzo.biz/KOWstory1.html
Those wings were the BEST. I can picture him in my mind's eye. Wish there were a picture of him somewhere.
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/226943581.html
The STrib article, above, covers the same ground as the other article. Though the other article doesn't have the STrib's annoying pop up advertisements and constant demands to subscribe...
Anyway, the article mentions how some people just give away their birds in the fall before winter sets in and the birds have stopped laying. Says people buy the chickens on Craigslist.
Thanks for the link to the king of wings story. He was a good man and I'll never forget the flavor of his wings. They were the best!
Johnny, hurray for bats! We think alike! I'm impressed with your knowledge. Everyone should know NOT to pick up an animal laying/lying on the ground. But as usual, I'm afraid it's a losing battle to teach some parents right from wrong, whether it be gang-bangin' or animal conservation.
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