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I liked that black rooster and thought I might keep him around. I was weary of killing chickens, anyway – a task I squeezed between toddler care and shuttling our pre-teen to extracurricular activities. One day I unknowingly took my stepson to Aikido class with chicken blood on my feet, which I noticed when I took off my sandals to walk across the very clean white martial-arts mat.

So I figured, one less rooster to kill, the better. But as it turned out, the Dark Cornish was mean. And Ella hated him accordingly. The black rooster was probably only 4 months old the first time he tried to attack her. I was tending to the tomato patch when I heard her shriek, and I turned just in time to see the black rooster run off.

“That black chicken hurt me!” Ella cried.

Finding no red marks on her skin, I figured the rooster scared her more than he hurt her. Ella is, admittedly, prone to dramatics. But every time we went outside, Ella grew more scared. “That black chicken chasing me!” she’d yowl. Over time, I began to think of the rooster as That Black Chicken.

The next time it attacked her, I saw it happen. The rooster strutted right up to her and went for her. It flew in her face and made some pecking motions at her eyes. I ran for her and threw a rock at the rooster’s head, but missed.

“Mommy,” Ella sobbed, “Let’s eat that black chicken!”

“Yes, Honey,” I comforted her. “We will eat That Black Chicken.”

And we did. That very night, we ate That Black Chicken. We roasted him. He tasted absolutely delicious. My husband put his fork down suspiciously early, but he hadn’t been there to witness That Black Chicken chasing our daughter.

Still, I had to wonder how many 2-year-olds in the world would come up with such a solution.

No More Mutant Chickens

There was a time, not long ago, when I did not eat meat at all. This might seem strange, coming from a woman who now ends up at Aikido class with chicken blood on her feet. But it’s true. I was raised by someone very squeamish, and in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, I had a nearly overwhelming sense that eating flesh was an act too violent for our fractured world.

So, for a time, I didn’t.

I also had a Buddhist boyfriend once who would lecture me that it wasn’t ethically OK to eat a creature if you weren’t willing to kill that creature yourself – at least in theory. It was hard to argue with this viewpoint.

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