Why Is Science So Lame?

Seriously. I mean, scientists are forever dicking around trying to cure malaria or unravel the genome to cancer, or maybe build shinier solar stuff, when what the world really needs is completely something else.

Non-fartogenic beer. That's a good example, right there. Who's out there, researching day and night to save us all from stinking great eye-watering, ass-burning beer farts? Nobody, that's who. But if you turned up tomorrow with fart-proof beer that tasted great and got you drunk just as fast -- dude, they wouldn't be able to get your name on the Nobel scrolls fast enough.

But that's not what I'm really talking about right now. Fart-proof beer isn't a bad idea, but what the world really, really needs is a self-disassembling chicken. Absolutely.

See, today we had some visitors. Actually, we had a couple today, and one leftover from the night before . That was Miss M the Student Dietician who turned up last night for Thai fish stew, and crepes with home-made vanilla ice-cream and garden-fresh raspberries. She stuck around to watch Igor up in the Cinema Zone with Clan Flinthart, plus a whole lot of popcorn and a large pitcher of that gin and curacao stuff... made for a good evening all around.

So Miss M and Nat and the kids were all hitting the blueberry pancakes this morning when our other visitors arrived -- a couple of local folk, who brought with them a pair of goddam roosters. Why? Because the local folk in question, who are perfectly lovely people in their own right, are animal softies. They rescue 'em. And keep 'em. And look after 'em.

And they aren't much chop when it comes to going the chop-chop with the excess of roosterage.

Enter Mr Flinthart and his Cleaver of Chicken Slaughteration.

Once the visitors toddled off, I felt I could go about Silencing the Roosters without alarming anyone unduly. So I seized the cleaver in question, opened the travel cage, and pulled out one of the big, white chooky bastards.

Cranky bloody thing it was, too. Lots of blurrrking and borrking, and attempts to gouge yours truly with the impressively large and sharp spurs on the back of the feet. Nasty. No wonder the lovely visitor-folks wanted rid of the damned things...

So I took Rooster One out to the wood-chop zone, and laid its head on the block. And who should come bolting around the corner but Younger Son, eh? Mightily excited, he is. Apparently some banana-brain has told him that chooks run around after you cut their heads off, and he is truly desperate to see...

...great.

No, I'm not gonna consult with Natalie, I figure. The Younger Son needs to understand how this stuff works if he's going to eat meat. I'm no vegetarian, as you all know -- but I don't have much time for people who will eat meat, but can't face the ugly facts behind that delicious, tasty meal. If you can't bring yourself to kill and clean the meat for your table, sez I, stick to the greenery. And no: I've never slaughtered a cow. But the odd lamb, occasional goat kid, and wallaby? Yep. Without blinking.

So I shrugged, and brought down the cleaver - which is fiendish sharp, oh yes - and Rooster One loses its Command and Control module. The head sits there on the chopping block, blinking and opening its beak remarkably like unto a chicken too stupid to know that it's dead, while the body leaps about, flapping and spraying blood, and Younger Son stares in fascinated horror...

I don't think he's going to have nightmares. But just to help him along, I made him put the head into the compost heap. And then, after I plunged Rooster One into a pot of boiling water to loosen the feathers, I left Younger Son hard-a-pluck, and introduced Rooster Two to a chunk of century-old hand-crafted German steel.

And there was much plucking, and stench of wet feathers, and then there was gutting and there was blood and me with my hand deep in a dead chicken's body cavity, grouting around for the little fraggy bits that you can never quite get loose. And at some point or another, Elder Son came out just as Younger Son discovered that you can squeeze a dead chicken and activate its voicebox, so there was macabre Zombie Chicken noise happening. And Elder Son wanted to know what was going on, so I called him over to help hold the remaining unviolated chicken corpse, and just as he was about to reach for it I gave it a squeeze and it went "blu-urrk!" in a convincingly chickenlike fashion and he jumped about a metre and a half and Younger Son fell about the place laughing, getting blood and feathers all over himself, and earning me the Wrath of Natalie who was Not At All Amused by Zombie Chicken antics.

Now both plucked, cleaned corpses are reposing quietly in the bottom of my refrigerator. Tomorrow I will joint them, season them, and slow bake them until they're crispy golden brown, to be served with new potatoes and garden salad and maybe a nice dry white wine... but nevertheless, it was still a horrid, ugly, stinky, feathery sort of job. And what I really want for Christmas, dear Science, is a chicken that will kill itself. And then shed all its feathers in a single fluffy cloud. And then fall apart into nice, neatly sectioned joints, with the giblets in a pile of ugly in the centre, ready to be properly disposed of.

Is that too much to ask, O Mighty Geneticists? Or are you too busy diddling around with second-rate shit like AIDS, Swine Flu, and a cure for Stephen Conroy?

... actually, I have to admit that I'd be prepared to accept a cure for Stephen Conroy. That would be cool too.