Chickens with their head cut off

[Larry Scroggs]

This was a regular occurrence on my grandparents'
farm. My grandmother usually used the "snap of the
wrist" method and my grandfather preferred to use a
hatchet while holding the chicken on a tree stump. My
grandparents' home had an open crawlspace under it and
my job, when I was a small lad, was to crawl under the
house to recover any chicken that ran under the house
after having its head removed. My grandmother could
make quite a tasty dish of chicken and dumplings.

Larry
Larry at Scroggs.com

On Mar 3, 2005, at 2:39 PM, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail
header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society
<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: strong like ball
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> We had chickens, and this twist of the wrist was a
coming of age
> phenomenon for me. The first time I was sent out to
do the deed
> (which I had observed many times), a breaking rather
than a parting
> of the neck resulted, so that the poor critter could
no longer hold
> its head up, but it did indeed run around the yard,
like a chicken
> with its head a-danglin rather than like one with
its head cut off. I
> caught it and took my little hatchet to it.
>
> I was later successful with this flick of the wrist
and sent many
> birds to the big coop in the sky.
>
> dInIs