Tuesday 13 November 2007

the shooting

ok...i seem to have lost the urge to write about love and passion and pain, so where does that leave me...
a poet without anxt...

perhaps i could tell you about the brace of pheasant ... except a brace means two and there were actually five. five pheasants hanging from the plant holder hook by the back door. dead birds, very dead birds.

the neighbour had left them there, a gift, a sharing of the bountiful harvest of the shooting season. we are expected to eat these birds?

i may have been born, many, many long years ago on a dusty farm on top of a mountain in southern africa... but that was it ... i grew up in the towns and cities of the province formerly known as natal, now known by the much more romantic name... the kingdom of kwazulu or if one is trying really hard to be diplomatic kwazulu natal.

one buys meat from a butcher, it comes cleaned and sliced and diced... no way does it have a head and feathers. man, i purely lost my appetite.

the daughter-in-law is made of sterner stuff, she comes from a family of game rangers and hunters. "if you eat meat, you should be prepared to kill it and clean it!" yeah right... i dunno, suddenly vegetarianism is looking like an option for me.
daughter in law wrapped up warm, picked up the pheasants and headed off to the byre... where she plucked, cleaned and jointed said birds, producing...well...it looks just like bird from a butcher.

ah farm life, we now have a pile of highly prized scots pheasant in our freezer. will i partake of this delicacy? hell..i don't know, i saw those pheasants with their feathers on, they looked just like the kamikaze pheasants which so delight in leaping in front of my rav on missions suicidal.

4 comments:

Me. Here. Right now. said...

My stepdad and brothers used to go hunt pheasant once a year (they wanted me to go, but I found waiting around terribly boring when there was action and excitement elsewhere to be had). Mom would clean and dress the bird and then put it on the table with a glass bowl on top so we could have "pheasant under glass." Then, we'd take a bite and spit shot out after each chew.

Mike S said...

1st visit here. No longer able to hunt, but very familiar with the 'shot per bite' formulation.
I've a friend who spends most holidays hiking in Scotland. He's a reporter with the same outfit that owns "The Scotsman" which I read on-line daily. I loved my time there.

reeflightning said...

lori, to be perfectly honest ... i actually prefer chicken! more substance and less chance of breaking another irreplaceable tooth.

reeflightning said...

hi mike, nice to meet you. scotland is a beautiful place... just have to learn to love the rain!