Can You Kill the Chicken?

In some cities, organic farmers are cult heroes, photographed for magazines and name-dropped on restaurant menus. Boomers flock to pasture tours while their Ivy League kids vie for farm internships. But the most unusual manifestation is the emergence of the slaughter-your-own-animal workshop. At more than a dozen farms across the nation, a small fee (usually $15 to $40) buys the opportunity to butcher your very own chicken, turkey or rabbit. _SmartMoney

Most people buy their meat, fowl, and fish at the supermarket, already dead and butchered. But what if you had to kill the chicken, and butcher it. Could you do it?

There are workshops available where for a small fee you can go to learn if you have the right stuff for cutting throats, putting a shotgun to an animal's skull, or otherwise shuffling off the critter's mortal coil. Then you butcher the carcass.

On the web you can learn to butcher pigs, or chickens, or rabbits, and probably just about any other animal that requires butchering prior to eating.

Do you think you could do it?

Even the most philosophical students can be surprised by their own hesitation. New York cheesemonger Laura Heifetz felt confident until she had the knife in her hand. Suddenly, she was struck with what she now refers to as a “weird dichotomy”—she didn’t mind killing the chicken, but she didn’t want to hurt it. Bellingham, Wash., food-bank coordinator Max Morange arrived at a pig-processing workshop thinking he’d slit the animal’s throat. It wasn’t until he got a look at the 300-pound porker that he realized the truth: “Pigs don’t really have necks.” He had to shoot the pig with the farmer’s shotgun and before pulling the trigger felt a flash of doubt. “I had to question whether this was a fair arrangement.” _SmartMoney

In a survival situation, you will probably be under a lot of stress. The more necessary things that you are already somewhat prepared to do, the better. For any difficult situation, it is always better to be overtrained. That is the secret of competent survivors like Sully Sullenberger -- get yourself overtrained well in advance of the crisis.

This is also an issue in politics, where voters tend to elect person's on the basis of everything except whether he is actually overtrained and overexperienced for the job. Green rookies in positions of responsibility can make a horrible mess. They are unlikely to be competent to clean up their own messes, either.

Be over-prepared.