Next time she cackled, she cackled on the table

We're not vegetarians, despite my sympathies for my fellow animals, which I guess makes me a hypocrite. But up until two days ago, we had never given Isaac any meat. We read him all these books about farm animals -- recently he's into Margaret Wise Brown's Big Red Barn, an utopian ideal of barnyard happiness -- and I am glad we don't yet have to answer hard questions about it. Cows give milk, hens give eggs, but Mama, why does the farmer keep the small pink pig around?

When I came home from work Friday evening, however, Craig had made us chicken enchiladas and had set aside some chicken for Isaac to try -- nice boiled organic free-range chicken. I had absolutely no good reason to prevent Isaac from eating it, except some philosophically shaky sense of wanting him to remain pure, so eat it he did.

He loved it. He couldn't shove those little cubes of chicken into his mouth fast enough. He said, "Mmmmm!" over and over. So much for purity.

And to make things worse, Craig sang a few lines from the Pete Seeger song about the old hen, a song which has always depressed me:

The first time she cackled, she cackled in the lot
The next time she cackled, she cackled in the pot
The old hen she cackled! She cackled in the stable
The next time she cackled, she cackled on the table

Poor old hen.