Fedora Chronicles Rants: Making A Killing

Making A Killing

October 23rd, 2007

I've been thinking a lot about "The Greatest Generation" recently. Obviously this has to do with a handful of things happening in the media, first with the Clint Eastwood movies "Flag Of Our Fathers," and "Letters From Iwo Jima." Then there were a few movies that I've acquired that I've yet to review, such as Peter Jackson's "King Kong," and a movie staring Nick Noltey called "Mulholland Falls." Then there is Ken Burns documentary: "The War," A miniseries on PBS that documented the lives of those effected by this conflict. Not just the men who fought and served, but those who remained at home and worked and sacrificed.

I keep asking some of the same fundamental questions, what made the people who were alive back then so special? What made them who they were and gave them the strength to do what they did.

One of the things that occurred to me is that many of the men who accomplished so much lived on farms. There's something about working with Live Stock... caring for it, feeding it and making sure that there's plenty of water for them to drink. Be sure the bedding is fresh and none of the animal waste attacks wild animals that can either spread diseases or kill your live stock. Then there's the eventual harvesting of this livestock, such as taking them to the butcher or slaughtering them yourself.

I used to raise poultry when I was in my teens. And while I've been wondering if what made The Greatest Generation the heroes of their time were some of the same things I did a generation ago. As I've been re-exploring aspects of my past, I wonder if I could do all that again. Divine Intervention gave me the chance to find out those answers when my wife and I got the opportunity to raise some new ducks of our own. I jumped at the opportunity.

So, I have to be careful when I ask if I can do something. Usually God (or Fate if you're so inclined) usually finds a way for me to have to do something that I say is impossible or I can't do it. If I say I can't climb to the top of Mount Everest, it would just be a matter of time before a ticket lands in my lap to a country in the Himalayas with a half a ton of hiking equipment and a ultra-high strength wind-cord to keep my fedora on, giving me the opportunity to prove to myself and the rest of the world that I was wrong.

Days later, three ducks were delivered to our house and with-in a day we had a house built for them. I haven't built anything substantial in over 20 years since shop class and the thought of operating a circular saw always frightened me because of the horror stories I've heard and deep cuts I've seen people sport. But, there I was, cutting wood and nailing pieces together like a pro, doing something that I thought couldn't be done by myself. The Duck Hutch stands as a testament to what I can accomplish when I set my fears aside. (It has survived one nasty wind and rain storm... lets see how it survives the winter.)

Weeks later, we adopted a goose that was abandoned at a local orchard. It was chasing the customers who were misinterpreting its actions as aggressiveness. I was able to walk right up to it and feed it by hand. The owners of the orchard saw this and asked jokingly if I would be willing to take it. I took them seriously and I did, putting it in the back of my jeep and drove home with out incident with my kids in their seats.

The Goose took less then two days to integrate with the three ducks at home, and soon they were sleeping together in the duck hutch. [Click Here to see the ducks happy in their new home...]

When Geese Attack...

Maybe a week or two after the goose settled in with the rest of the duck, I was working on moving the chicken wire gate a little to the north so they could have some fresh grass to chew on. Coppertop was sitting on a roll of chicken wire that was off to the side. He was minding his own business reading something he brought home from School.

When the goose attacked him, I was around the corner of the house at the faucet changing out hose attachments. I heard Coppertop screaming as Harry came to get me. I didn't see what happened, but I heard it and saw the results. The goose took several pecks at his face, nailing him once under the eye and again below it. Then there were marks on his chest and arm that indicate the goose took four or five more pokes at him.

After getting him inside, I cleaned up the scrapes and the bruises the best I could while he was hysterical. After seeing the damage that was done, I went out to do what I knew had to be done... I had to kill it.

Those moments were a blur, but I remember the blood rushing to my head and my face feeling hot. My anger took over my consciousness . At first I tried to break the goose's neck, grabbing it and bending the head back as far as it could go. I never heard or felt a break, and after a minute I let it go. The goose ran off, shaking off what just happened.

A moment later, I grabbed the foul monster and held it by the neck in an effort to strangle it. I squeezed with all of my might with one hand as I covered its eyes with the other. With in a minute, the goose went limp and I thought I did it. I thought I choked the life out of it. I waited an extra minute before throwing the carcass away from me. The goose stirred, got up, and ran to the pen.

In my rage, I thought about taking one of the shovels and cutting its head off as I stood on its neck. I thought better of it, now that I was calmer. I started to think about what I would do once it was dead. I wanted to be practical, I didn't want to bury it or let some wild animal consume it. I was thinking now of killing it in a rational way so that we could cook it for dinner. It had to be killed then immediately refrigerated.

I had no ax or hatchet. I had no means of cleaning it. But I knew who did.

I called my friends from the area, Penny answered the phone. I explained to her the situation, and she agreed to help. All I had to do was bring the goose over to her house the next morning...

The next 18 hours were difficult. The hours either passed too fast, or too slow. The more I thought about what I had to do, the more I had to force myself to put it out of my head. The night was long, I laid awake in bed wondering if I could do this. I thought about the first turkey I killed back in the mid-1980's and about the person I used to be back then.

I thought about how so much had changed since my last killing. I thought about how 20 years had flown by, filled with periods of time that were varied and flavored, almost like an assortment of candy in a bowl. I thought about how the ways we've changed in the ways we communicate, how many of us meet people with similar interest would meet by chance in High School, College and then in the working world... and then how many of us meet in groups on the internet. We communicate in more sophisticated ways, but we still do most of our killing using tools and techniques that haven't changed since the dawn of human history - sharp objects with blunt heavy weight and leverage from a long handle.

I laid awake thinking how would I be able to physically and emotionally hold this thing down as I took the killing blow... and pushed the intellectual discomfort aside. And I wondered, how did solders sleep before combat? How did they get any rest or solace the night before, how did they prepare themselves to kill other human beings who were on the other side? How did they do what they did when I had trouble killing a simple animal?

The next day, I drove over with the goose in the trunk. My actions in getting there were clinical and decisive. I had to do this, I had to not only kill this thing out of simple necessity and desire for a good meal but to prove that if needed, I could do something difficult now as I could in the past.

Sharpening the ax. We must have been working on this for quite some time, I'm guessing for at least 5 minutes. We both took turns to make sure it was done right. I wanted the cut to be clean and quick, and only have to strike once.

The Other Side Of The River In My Mind...

After the ax was sharpened, it was time to get the goose. I went to the jeep, opened up the back and grabbed it by the neck. I carried it over to where Penny had the string waiting to tie its feet. This is when I started asking myself, how am I going to feel at the other side of this.

Killing this goose was like crossing a river in my head, once I accomplished this thing I expected to be in a different state of mind. I had been avoiding doing some difficult things recently, starting with a confrontation with a local community leader and some blatantly horrible laps in judgment and taste. There used to be a time, before my sons were born and before our Generation's Pearl Harbor, that I could confront people about issues that were important. I could call people on the carpet and it was easier to do difficult things back then.

Now, because I witnessed the death of 3,000 people on live television, heard the stories of those people who had survived and lost loved ones, I lost my nerve in some regard. Life can be so fragile. There was a point where I held back from saying negative things to people in my life knowing that there were some bad things said in anger and frustration that could never be taken back nor could forgiveness be asked.

Then, with the birth of my sons... something else inside me changed. Between the time I came home from this killing to the time I started writing this rant I talked to Doug "Webhead73" Palumbo who also has two sons, about how something changes in some men after witnessing the birth of their children. It makes some men more sensitive to someone else's pain, more empathetic towards others. You're no longer an island, its no longer about you. If you can care and love something more then you love yourself such as your offspring, then the logical conclusion is that something else is someone else's offspring. Unless there are extenuating circumstances you don't want to hurt or be a witness to some other suffering.

This Goose almost took my son's eye, scared the crap out of him and his younger brother. This is one of those circumstances that I have to do something that will cause a life to be taken.

From the back of the jeep to where the picture above was taken, all these things went through my mind. Not specify... not in such articulate detail, but just flashes of concepts. Then we started to walk down the trail to find a place to do this thing.

The Killer Becomes The Killing

Penny and Ray have a vast area to themselves behind their home. Only a fraction of it is used for their goat farm. The rest of this area is vast, almost untouched New England Forest unmarked with the exception of a new dirt road made rugged by lose rocks and small boulders.

The property sits on a slope along the side of a small mountain in New Hampshire, so that the road that we walked pitched down. It was a long walk down to where we found the stump. The Goose was getting heavy in my arms, but stopped squirming. I started to wonder what this goose could be thinking. I put the thought that out of my mind. Like I push out other difficult things.

There's the concept of "putting something out of your mind," when you're faced with a difficult task that you have to complete. There's a conscious effort when putting something out of your mind like an uncomfortable thought and feeling. You just tell yourself to just stop thinking about it and focus on the actual actions involved. Sometimes, depending on what's going on, there's a cooling effect that comes over my body, feeling the my temperature drop a few degrees as I focus on the actual actions.

Focusing on just the actions, the steps down to where the killing will take place, the conversation that Penny and I were having, the weight of the bird in my arms, the feel of the hatchet in my hand through the dried-out leather glove. And then we came to the stump.

Click The Links for pictures of The Slaughter
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We laid the goose down, with little protest at first. I focused on the moment, not thinking of what brought me to this moment, not thinking about how I was going to feel afterwards, just laying the birds neck down on the stump and taking the first killing swing. The moment had come. My face felt hot and the skin on my face was tight.

The goose laid there, began to squawk, then honked loudly. I took a swing and the hatchet connected with the neck and blood began to spill. I wasn't sure that it was really dead, it took several swings before the final strings of tissue and lengths of ligaments were broken and the separated head was in my left hand and the hatchet was in my right.

I threw the head aside in a weird, morbid anger... as if to say "to hell with you!" The goose that attacked my son, the goose that we tried to keep as a pet, the goose that we thought we rescued from being abandoned and hit by a car, was now dead.

Finally, On The Other Side...

Penny and I cleaned the goose after we walked back to the house. We had a casual conversation about this particular slaughter and how times had changed since she was younger. She was my youngest son's age when she watched her mom do what she was doing now... cutting the bottom of the duck open and removing its organs. First the intestines, then the liver, kidneys and gizzard, finally the heart and the lungs. There was an organ that looked tiny and was in the shape of a heart, neither of us knew what it was. We found the real heart later... holding it in our hands as if it was a mere curious and inanimate object.

We plucked most of the feathers off, and we shared our memories of earlier slaughters and how she and her husband do it now. Soon afterwards, it was over. I thanked her, put the goose remains that were to be cooked this weekend in one plastic bag, the remains to be discarded into another.

The drive home was a blur. I walked inside and put the bag with the goose body in the fridge. I then went down stairs and removed my bloodied pants into a heap, along with the shirts I had worn.

My wife and I talked about what happened and why I had to do what I did this morning. She said she had a new respect for me, saying that she couldn't have done what I did. There was this surreal moment, heading towards the shower... I was at that point that I was looking forward to. I was on the other side of the river in my mind. I crossed that barrier that I hoped would change my state of mind, hoping that the self doubt that had existed would be gone. The things I avoided because they were uncomfortable, could I face them now?

As I told Doug in the conversation that I mentioned earlier, there's something dormant in a man that wakes up when he accomplishes something that's difficult. You don't realize that it's there, maybe because you become numb to its wanting. You become acclimated to its sense of emptiness.

But it wakes up when it's satisfied, and you're aware of it... what ever it is that's now awake and alive is what makes you stand up a little taller and puts energy in your stride. And as I write this, I wonder if this is what men of The Greatest Generation felt after accomplishing their goals. Is this what they felt, and what was their name for this feeling, that thing in side them that woke up? And was this what gave them the power to accomplish all they did after they came home after the war?

Or was there something more? They defeated the greatest evil this world had ever known, and all I did was merely kill a goose that acted out... hardly the stuff of legends.

Epilogue

This whole experience brought out a lot of feelings and memories that I thought were buried in the past, refreshed by doing things that I thought I would never do again, or thought I was capable of. More then 20 years ago, I raised geese, turkey's, ducks - killed most of them myself and cleaned them. It was a gruesome experience that hardened some aspects of my character and sharpened others. I had to re-live that part of my life when I had to kill the goose after it attacked my son. Before, as I wrote already, my concern was that I couldn't do it because something inside me changed since the moment my son's were born. But I finally did what I had to do, I killed it, cleaned it, then we cooked it last night and had the best dinner in a while.

There's this feeling a man gets when he overcomes a difficulty and not only survives, but strives. And there's a feeling that a woman gets when she sees her man over come some adversity and provides. It's primeval, slightly primitive... yet very satisfying. The night my wife and I cooked and then ate the goose was one of the happiest we've had in awhile. I had no pangs of guilt, no remorse. Rather, there was this sense of pride and calm that a better writer might have an easier time explaining. This was a feeling I wish other people could have.

That feeling of self reliance is what's missing in our so-called modern society, what makes men and women restless. To try and compensate for that, we try to fill that need by purchasing things, or getting into hobbies or activities that we think are manly but aren't. We over indulge in consuming food or drink, become complacent because our basic needs are taken care of through commerce and an infrastructure.

One of our columnists and part-time Moderator Stella Nobrega-Collins asked a question "Does anyone else disagree with hunting?" and she makes a point of saying that she couldn't do what I did, even if she had to, even if a member of her family was starving. Many people like Doug "Webhead73" Palumbo insists that if she had to, if there was a genuine need... she could. I don't agree. Many of us talk about how we could switch into "Action Hero" mode if the situation demands that of us, but with the exception of many of the folks on The Fedora Chronicles Forum, I'm concerned that our survival instincts have been bred out of us since childhood through movies starring talking animals and progressively stricter fire arm laws.

In the event that one of our basic needs - electricity - was taken away from us through some cataclysmic collapse and there was no "juice" to run pumps for water or gas, the situation would be grim for most of us. Since the vast majority of people in western world lack the basic tools to forage or kill our own food, there prospects are pretty bleak.

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But for the members of The Greatest Generation, they proved that they were resilient to near-apocalyptic social and economic disasters. Many of those who grew up during the Great Depression had to get by and make due with out some - or even most - of the basic necessities. Learning how to get by must have prepared them for the first skirmishes in North Africa against Rommel's army, then through all of Western Europe and the Pacific to finally defeat The Nazi and Imperial Japanese Forces.

As I'm caring out my daily routine, digesting the last bit of goose meat as I wake up before the sun rise and wearing some of my replicas of vintage gear trying to literally walk miles in the shoes of The Greatest Generation, I wonder if they knew that the hardships they faced in their youth prepared them for what was in store for them when they became young adults. I also wonder what awaits me as I'm being prepared, what hardships await for me to over come?

How did the slaughter of one goose bring up issues about our collective mortality, the disproportionate way that nerve and courage has been distributed to the men in our culture, World War II and September 11th... and overcoming difficulty?