The Man in the Monster by Martha Elliott

final check and turn off the water for the evening to prevent any chance of flooding.
    â€œI did it on my own even though I hated getting up that early in the morning,” Michael admitted. “I guess I kind of got used to it. It’s a lifestyle, farming. There’s a lot of satisfaction from raising a good flock of birds. I got a batch of baby chicks, and I got to raise them for five months before they went into the henhouse. And I knew that the birds that went into that henhouse were better birds than we could buy anywhere else. That’s farming.”
    While most of his job was caring for the birds, the flock also had to be culled. Weak or sick birds don’t grow into productive hens and are an expense that needs to be eliminated as soon as possible. Michael understood that killing the birds was a necessity, even if it was unpleasant.
    â€œOkay, now Michael, pay attention,” said his grandfather. “You’ve got to break its neck. Hold their feet in your left hand and hold their neck with your right hand. The trick is to break the neck without pulling off the head,” he instructed. “That can get pretty bloody,” Michael told me. “You pull the neck until you feel the bone break, then immediately stop pulling.”
    Michael, immature and uncoordinated, tried to repeat the procedure that his grandfather had demonstrated but pulled the neck off the bird, wincing as blood spewed all over. He worried that if he didn’t do his job properly, the responsibility might be taken away. But as time went on, he got better. Soon he bragged that he could kill chicks in his sleep.
    The first flock he tended was already a few months old when he took charge. Later, when the next batch of day-old chicks was delivered, Michael needed to learn other methods of culling. For the first four or five weeks, the chicks are only four to five inches long, so small that it is virtually impossible to break their necks. For these birds, his grandfather explained, there are two methods of killing—“The way I like to do it is to just squeeze the lungs until the bird suffocates.” But Michael didn’t like this method because it took too long. It was difficult for his small hands to exert enough pressure for any length of time, especially with the chick squirming, desperately fighting for its life. Sometimes it would take him two or three tries to kill a chick.
    The second method is quicker, but, Michael felt, “more overtly brutal. You take the chick in your hand and smack its head against a post. If you do it right, the chick will die on the first whack and not make abloody mess.” Learning exactly how hard to hit the bird against the post takes experience. He didn’t particularly like this method either and was always glad when the birds were big enough so that he could break their necks because “it seemed more humane.”
    At times Michael would get in trouble for not killing the birds, especially the older ones. Sometimes Marek’s disease struck the birds at twelve to sixteen weeks, paralyzing one side of the bird so that it couldn’t get to food or water. Having raised them from the first day of their lives, Michael would feel sorry for the afflicted birds and individually feed and water them by hand. Some survived and gained partial use of their limbs, but they were irrevocably damaged and never would grow into productive hens. Whenever his grandfather found a bird that Michael had spared, he would scold him. “Michael, these birds are suffering and have to be put out of their misery. Besides, they will eat our feed, but they’ll never lay an egg. They’ve got to go. Period.” It was pure farm economics.
    Ever obedient, Michael did what he was told—even unpleasant things. That also included learning how to turn off his feelings, how to separate himself from what he was doing. “Very early, killing became an accepted pattern,” Dr.