free to range chickens

Free ( To) Range Chicken
By Wally Nichols
(203) 858 3634
“Hi! My name is Rosie and I’ll be your roaster. You probably picked me up in the frozen food department of finer markets like Wild Oats or Whole Foods. You can see from the post-consumer recycled, bleach-free cardboard ‘personality card’ twist- tied to my leg that I have had a fantastically free , well-nurtured , happy, happy (very happy) life. My family life is (check that, was) solid, all American. White meat and dark meat, all getting along. Very little tension or drama to agitate the adrenal gland.
Family values, as we say here at Happy Daze Organic Farms, are the key to good, wholesome taste. I’ve had 324 sisters (that I know of) who also were free (to) range like me. I have a BA in humanities with a minor in African-based ethnomusicology. The farm where we grew was very forward thinking in this regard. Tuition is guaranteed free up to the graduate level, so long as we complete it in the 7 weeks we have to live. In this short time I’ve known love, dreamt of sunsets, and blogged, so feel good about the quality of life I’ve had. Plus the hormone free, antibiotic free food they serve is yummilicious. It’s like being on a cruise ship here. Only a cruise that never ends! (Or never goes anywhere) Can anyone say ‘race you to the buffet on the Lido Deck’? Ok well, it does eventually end or I wouldn’t be frozen and upside down in your cart.
If you have gone to the trouble and expense of finding me in the high end freezer section towards the back of the store, it means you care. And I care right back. I care that you care. So let me tell you more about me and my complete, wholesome upbringing so that you may consume me with as little Karmic interference or retaliation as possible. My legs and wings, for example, are real and mine. I’m prouder of my appendages than Tina Turner. Some accounts hold that mass produced chickens at other farms are missing limbs due to genetic anomalies, manipulations or gang fighting within the institutional coop and as a result, to appear normal, have had (pre flavored?) prosthetics hot glued on. Not here. At Happy Daze Organic Farms Free Range Poultry, there’s none of that business. We have 24 x 7 security to keep it all on the up and up. And we have webcams everywhere. There’s a strict zero tolerance policy when it comes to tomfoolery (or anything that might encourage striated muscle development). You can see for yourself. Just log on to www.happydaze.com/coopcam/happy/happy/happy . Happiness for each of the 60,000 of us is mandatory and the unhappy are quarantined until they become happy.
We’re all free range, which these days is a must to remain commercially viable. Actually the multi story building in which we live, the Main Auditorium for Nutrition, Undergraduate Studies and Relaxation Exercises (M.A.N.U.R.E.), or “the Big House” as we call it as it’s made of cinderblocks, has a wide open door for any and all to come and go as they please. Including the FDA suits that pay random visits and stamp “Certified Free Range” on our rumps. But frankly, with the AC on and the HDTV that is supplied (and the endless conveyor belt proffering scratch grains for the taking!), watching CSPAN indoors at 11am is quite preferable to poking around in the blistering hot sun. As a result, few of us actually go out. I mean, why bother? Plus there’s danger out there. Disease, plague, famine, wars, roads, PETA. So we don’t go out, though I’m quick to point out we are allowed to. And in the strictest definition of self determination, which is what you are paying for, albeit frozen and minus a head, s ‘free (to) range’ is as over the goal line as ‘free range.’
Now, that said, I’ve included some tips that will make your dining experience even tastier. Enjoy your meal and remember, it’s been a pleasure to have been served to you.
xo,
Rosie