Letter to the Editor: Thank you, organic cocks/hens as appropriate

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Dear organic chicken or chickens (or cocks and/or hens) who were the source of the two thighs I ate last night:

Thank you for your lives.

I guess it is presumptuous to write to you since we never met when you were alive and now you’re dead and I ate you. Actually, I don’t know really know WHO to thank since it’s unclear if these were a matched set of thighs (left and right) from a single chicken or whether they were two thighs from two chickens and now that I think about it I didn’t even check to see if they were left or right and how would I know?

The store said you lived a free range and organic life and I believe it because when I baked you on the bone with just a simple rub of Sriracha and honey and a sprinkle of gray sea salt at 425° for 35 minutes you tasted all chickenny and yum. Not like the big bags of frozen Kroger crap at Ralphs but like a real chicken.

Did you eat worms and bugs and stuff? Or did the organic farmer peeps sprinkle out organic pellets of chicken feed? What’s IN chicken feed? I’m from the city and what I don’t know about chickens could fill a book. As long as I have you on the line, when exactly DO the chickens come home to roost?

I served you with some nice sides, too, cause you deserve it — Mahatma brown rice made with Herdez Salsa Casera (Mexico’s favorite!) and black beans which were on sale $2.49 for a 31-ounce pop-top can.

Thanks for eating the worms and bugs and roaming out of your cage. If I were a better person, you might still be free as a bird.

But I’m not and neither are you.

Sincerely,

Carlos Mansion

P.S.: They said at the store you were air-dried. What does that even mean? Do some chickens get dried off with hot towels?