One of mr. flea's father's strong childhood memories is watching his mother kill and pluck chickens. Note that they lived, not on a farm, but in Cleveland, in the city proper. This would have been in the 1940s.

Sparky, I emailed Perkins already & I'll email you too.

There are butchers who will do this part for you, I've read.

That's true. I know my dad has nightmares of watching his grandmother slaughter chickens -- he doesn't watch horror to this day.

I just don't think I would be good at it. I only remember to feed the kids and the cats because they won't let me forget. But I think it would be totally cool to eat perfectly fresh eggs.

My friend Kevin grew up on a farm and killed many chickens a day starting when he was about 10. (He showed me his technique.)

I asked my Aunt Edna once how she decided which chicken to kill for dinner: "Well [editorial note: this actually sounded more like "Whelp..."], I usually grab the one that's closest. But if she pecked me that week, she's dinner."

I saw a chicken wandering by the side of the highway yesterday. I'm not sure where it belonged. It was on prison property. There are usually cows in that field, and sometimes horses, but I've never seen chickens there before, and this one was outside the fence.

I kinda think chickens seem evil, but apparently they can be very friendly and soothing. My step-grandmother's sister was a Buddhist nun in Santa Barbara, and they kept chickens at the nunnery and people used to hug them, and found it relaxing. Maybe they were special Buddhist chickens.

Then they need to give you a raise. If no one else can/will work with her, you need hazard pay.

L.O.L. Yeah, I have actually asked for hazard pay, in those words. I'm not getting a raise more than the usual 3%.

Chickens are legal in my town, and every now and then I'll see one or two wandering around loose in one of the central neighborhoods.

The wandering herds of deer and occasional woodchuck incursion are far more bother.

I kinda think chickens seem evil, but apparently they can be very friendly and soothing. My step-grandmother's sister was a Buddhist nun in Santa Barbara, and they kept chickens at the nunnery and people used to hug them, and found it relaxing. Maybe they were special Buddhist chickens.

My friend who worked for the ASPCA, where they had an awards luncheon for animals, had some good stories about therapy chickens.

I'm working on a paper for my Deaf Culture class. It's analyzing the portrayal of deaf culture and deaf characters on "Switched at Birth." I really need to get in some stuff about paternalistic attitudes from hearing people, but it's pretty difficult to figure out how to describe it when the hearing people in question are actually the parents of the deaf girl.

I think possibly roosters are evil, but hens seem comforting, because they just sit. I think I might want a therapy chicken!

I also love the thought of hipster chickens!

They killed and plucked chickens in the store when my mom was little in the 40's and 50's in Rochester.