Been eating a bit of pheasant recently. My uncle gave us a half dozen. He shoots in and around the fields in his area. They are small and the meat is dark, and occasionally you have to spit the shot out from between your teeth, but they taste like you wouldn’t believe.
One of my strong childhood memories is of always being given a couple of pheasants by our extended family in the run-up to Christmas. Freshly killed, they would hang in the washroom for a couple of days to soften the meat. They seemed frighteningly real and feral whenever I passed them; dripping occasional drops of blood onto the tiles below and filling the room with a musty, sharp odour.
Some evening we would spread the birds on newspapers on the kitchen table and start plucking. My dad would take the head and feet off with a knife. Mam would have us reach inside to pull out the gizzards and guts into a slop on the paper, quizzing us on the innards laid out in front of us. Finally, we would light the ends of rolled-up newspapers and singe the skin to take off any small feather-ends left. To clean up we would roll up the mess and push it into the range.
While I have no ethical problem with the eating of meat, I think we all get a little disconnected from the idea of what is on the plate. It would probably be a good idea for everyone who wants to be a meat-eater to have to pluck a bird or gut a fish from time to time. I’m not saying that everyone should have to pull the trigger, but if all you ever see is neatly cleaned cuts in a polystyrene tray, it’s a little to easy to distance yourself from where it came from.
Sitting in the middle of a taste orgy the other night I felt like I would gladly give up all the factory farmed, tasteless, textureless chicken in the world for a few mouthfuls of wild pheasant once or twice a week.
A memory that stands out was when we had some sheep butchered. I didn’t see the act, nor did I want to. I remember my brother handing me a lamb’s liver in a plastic bag on the journey back home. It was still warm. I kept my composure for fear of being called a cry baby or worse a “townie”.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not condoning vegetarianism but lets hope we never get to the point in the future where we can genetically engineer cows to speak. Hearing Cows bellowing for their calves after they were separated was just annoying when you were trying to get to sleep. I think hearing them cry out in English may haunt me.
P.S. tonight we’re having steak burgers yum, yum.
— James Nov 28, 09:36 AM #
Do the rest of them just consider us to be too much of townies to be able to pluck our own any more? I’m not saying they’re wrong.
— damh Nov 28, 07:31 PM #
I dunno Damh, they were all already prepared. Skinned though, not plucked. Still lovely. We’ve still got a few, there’ll probably be more before you get back.
— Pierce Nov 28, 08:12 PM #
— Feaverish Dec 3, 05:11 PM #
You see nothing resembling natural order can exist in our world, we manipulate by our mere presence.
Aside:
I was watching an interesting programme on the Japanese Imperial house.
As one might expect of any ruling class worth their salt,the emperor enjoyed many fine leisure time pursuits, notably duck hunting. I was saddened to learn however that this consisted of chasing groups of confused birds around the garden (an ornate and delicately beautiful, cherry blossomed one) with a large net!
— The Bubble Gum Prince Dec 23, 07:38 PM #
— Pierce Dec 24, 12:13 AM #