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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Feral fowl taste
freedom; others
just tastyThe holy cows of Calcutta have nothing on the wild righteous roosters and hallowed hens of Hawaii. The revered bovines of India merely lope around the country trying to look as much unlike food as possible to the starving masses while, at the same time, trying not to inadvertently wander into Pakistan, whose inhabitants would rather put a cow on a barbecue than a religious pedestal.
Our feral fowl, the dog-size birds that roam city, county, back lot and front yard in Hawaii, are an unruly bunch. They scratch hillsides of dirt onto roadways (covering up entire stretches of asphalt) and shriek in a very non-cock-a-doodle-doo sort of way throughout the night. They've also been known to turn over small cars and flash switchblades on Kalihi street corners at passers-by. Unlike mongooses and cockroaches, they do not scurry for cover at the approach of a human. They extort geckos and strong-arm wharf rats. In short, they are the most incorrigible of all wild animals in Hawaii. And yet, instead of being on wanted posters, they enjoy a free-wheeling lifestyle, protected by animal rights activists, animal wrongs activists, the Humane Society, the League of Feathered Voters and American Chicken Liberties Union.
You aren't supposed to kill these wild birds, even if they are in the process of burying your house with red dirt or driving you to psychosis through their Human Sleep Deprivation Project. You are supposed to "trap" these buggers, and yet there are few traps available. And even if you manage to get a trap, capturing a wild rooster is like trying to herd gerbils.
The big question is, Why are the rights of these at-large chickens any more precious than the ones raised on farms and trucked off to processing plants every day?
Why does the American Chicken Liberties Union ignore the rights the thousands of chickens sacrificed to the alter of huli huli fund-raisers each weekend or those luckless pluckers sent off to eternity in Styrofoam plate lunch coffins?
I'm not saying that all those store-bought chickens should be saved from the supermarket poultry shelves. It's their sad fate that God made lots of animals taste like chicken and none more than chickens themselves. I'm just saying that if farm-raised chickens -- who actually serve a public good -- are subject to capital punishment, then why not all those crazy hooligan birds roaming free?
I propose the state put a small bounty on wild roosters and chickens. Call it a "Beak Bounty." For every wild chicken produced either living or dead at a designated central receiving station as far away from my house as possible, the bounty hunter will receive a few bucks or a KFC coupon. This will quickly solve the problem of wild chickens inundating our neighborhoods, depress poultry market prices and lower Hawaii residents' overall cholesterol level.
I'm sure there will be an outcry from hen huggers that the killing and eating of wild chickens without their attorneys present is cruel and unusual punishment. It's funny that these same people don't bat and eye -- or a beak for that matter -- when the truck passes by taking all those farm-reared, law-abiding chickens to face their destiny and related side dishes.
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Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com