Chickens Are Assholes

I've recently started chicken picking. This involves driving to a barn with (usually) five other people and the forklift driver. Once you arrive at the farm, you all change into the rattiest clothes you have (I obtained these from the ever faithful Value Village), strap a mask on your face and enter the barn. As you do so you are instantly hit with a wall of ammonia. Lovely, right? I think it's just delicious.

What you see is basically a white, feathered floor. Chickens as far as the eye can see. There's the occasional squawk, a feathered eruption from somewhere in the barn, quiet clucking. To start out you grab their feet. Now they don't usually know what's going on so they sort of let you. As I have small hands (although I've been told over and over this isn't an excuse) I can only grab six chickens. Sista does eight. She says she can do fifteen, and I've heard stories of a guy who can pick up 27 chickens at a time. (I believe that to be a rumor, told to newcomers to make them feel pathetic...)

Now, chicken legs are bony. They are bone. Have you ever seen a chicken leg? Not the most pleasent thing to have wedged inbetween my bony fingers. As I've got my six, I stand up. The chickens choose this moment to realize they may actually be in trouble, as if someone grabbed their legs all the time, but eventually let them go. So they flap their wings and peck and squawk and have a little freak out. If they're big chickens, this poses a problem and I must attempt to get them in the drawers whilst they're flapping about. In their little freak out, they'll probably have pooped on my arm, or my hand or my face. And if they get their chance, they peck at me too.

Once in the drawer, I turn to grab my next six. Now, some cheeky little chicken who really hates my guts decides it won't stay in the drawer. It wants freedom. Freedom being a muggy, dusty barn with 23,000 other chickens. It hops out just as I turn around. Or not. Assuming I see it jump out, I sigh in frustration and lean down to grab that one little chicken. As it just found 'freedom' it flaps even harder the second time and I have to shove it in that drawer. If I don't see it jump out, then that little chicken has just thrown the count of my drawer off and become a stray. Way to go.

Picking up chickens is hard work. Getting them into drawers is hard work. Shaking the drawers to get the chickens to the back so you can fit more in is hard work. Chicken picking is hard work. As we finish and I chug all the water I can without taking a breath, I feel a sense of accomplishment in an empty barn. Then I start to change out of my smelly, poop covered clothes and discover an assortment of bleeding scratches all over my legs. Huge bruises in random spots. My ring won't fit because my poor fingers are swollen.

Chickens are assholes. They couldn't just hop in the drawers? I mean, come on. This job is hard enough, why do they have to flap around and freak out, making it harder? Why must they peck and scratch and squawk? Mind you, if you were throwing me in a drawer to be sent to my death, I'd do that too. I'd bite you and hit you and claw you and kick you. Not sure if I'd degrade myself to pooping on you, but I'd probably come close. I'd do whatever I could to get out of there. So, I suppose, if I were a chicken, I'd be an asshole too.