The new phrase for futility: “you can’t pluck a frozen chicken.”

…aaah, so that’s why you pluck ‘em first.

Today I learned the hard way that feathers and a meat saw don’t exactly work well together.  We had a chicken die a few days ago – one of the big meat birds.  Jenn attributes it to a heart attack.  Seriously, they are getting big. 

Jenn came to the front door with the dead chicken in her hand and stumps where it’s legs used to be.  She’d chopped them off with a maul, which is pretty much a sharp sledgehammer, and ours is none too sharp, but in her persistance, Jenn had managed to remove the legs below the knees.  

“I’m going to put it in the freezer for the dogs.” she told me.  That was Wednesday of last week.  Today, when I went out to cut fish for the dogs, I forgot that there was a seven pound chicken in the freezer and so when I opened it and saw a myopic and glassy stare I was somewhat startled at first; blocks of fish trimmings don’t usually have eyes. 

Having cut the fish into nice sized chunks for the dogs I decided, since I already had the saw running, that I should cut the chicken, too.  It was solid, so I cut off it’s head and then ran the chicken through lengthwise, cutting it in half.  That was a mistake.  The feathers all piled up in a slot meant only for a metal blade 1/64th of an inch thick and started to heat up the blade due to the friction.  When the hot blade hit the lower intestine and subsequently the colon (or whatever makes up a poultry plumbing system) the stink was unbelievably bad.  Hot chicken crap.  I bet it would have repelled a dump-bear.

I had to cut around this lower part of the chicken and by now, there are feathers everywhere.  Like a pillow exploded, only smellier.  The feathers kept jamming the blade, and the motor kept trying to turn the blade so eventually, I ended up tripping the breaker on the generator that I use to run the saw.  Now, I have to wait until the generator has cooled down sufficiently to reset the breaker so that I can finish the job.

It’s hard to believe that it took me fifteen minutes to cut up a frozen chicken.

On the radio the other day was the comment that it seems like it’s been a particularly bad year for mosquitoes.  Really?  I hadn’t noticed.  I thought that high-pitched whine in my ear were angels singing.

Anyway, to help the dogs out a bit, we have hung a bug zapper light in the dogyard and we spray them with a citronella-based fly repellant.  Actually, we don’t spray them; we used to, but they hated it.  They’d run away or hide in their houses.  Now, we have an old cotton/polyester glove that we soak with spray and then rub on the dogs which is good, because they think they are getting a scratch or a pat but really, they’re getting doused.  Most dogs are good about it.  Then, there’s Hope:
You’d think I’d just ladled DDT on her.