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I was aware, before I headed out tonight, that my kitchen was to be a tableau of meat and organs, blood and bone. I call it Kitchen Venison Butchering. The perpetrator is my in-house hunter and cook. You\u2019d think, being my employee, he\u2019d at least conduct a thorough cleaning after butchering.<\/p>\n
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He insists he\u2019s not my staff but my husband, and, as such, has the right to use our kitchen for butchering. As much right as I have, say, to use our rec room for Star Trek: Picard<\/em> viewing parties.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He also wants to know where, exactly, I suggest he do the butchering. Outside? The shed? The garage?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, yes. Yes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And no. Definitely not.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As I was primping<\/a> to head out, Don opened a folding table in the center of the kitchen, Pete the beagle confident beneath. Like many good cooks, Don is a slob in the kitchen. To paraphrase Under The Tuscan Sun<\/em>, Don cooks spherically, in all directions. Pete is hoping to benefit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don hauled his cooler stuffed with quartered venison into the kitchen, setting it perpendicular to the folding table. He arrayed a stack of tools across the surface. That\u2019s it. No newspaper. No butcher paper – isn\u2019t that what it\u2019s for? No drain in the floor to swirl butchering detritus from this world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I am getting picked up, in a few short minutes, for Book Club. I think Book Club is probably the opposite of Kitchen Venison Butchering.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I call my girlfriend and suggest she honk when she arrives. Avoid entering my house. I explain that an entire venison is in a cooler on the kitchen floor, and an entire venison hunter is standing next to it, ready to dissect.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Understand, I\u2019m not disturbed by butchering. I just don\u2019t think it needs to happen in the middle of the house. I am a teensy bit disturbed that my hunter never gave Kitchen Venison Butchering a second thought. That this, for him, is as natural as showering in the shower. I am more disturbed by his belief that the kitchen is clean in the aftermath of Kitchen Venison Butchering.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I return home, the cooler, folding table, tools are all put away. Venison is piled in the garage chest freezer. Blood is working its way into the grooves of the kitchen cabinets. There are large drops of goo on the floor, like someone has tossed a handful of gruesome coins. Pete\u2019s nose just isn\u2019t that great.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHow was Book Club?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou would make a crappy serial killer,\u201d I answer. \u201cYou\u2019d get caught before you could ever get going.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He is oblivious to the mess to which I am referring. I\u2019d go to jail, too. His accomplice, cleaning up the scene of his crime.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My mother-in-law tells me I\u2019m patient to allow butchering in the house.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I had an option?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I weigh this out. I could demand that the butchering be done elsewhere. But where? Our shed is too small. Our garage? It would still require cleanup, and since I\u2019m the cleanup crew, I\u2019d like someplace temperate and mouse-free.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There\u2019s something else to consider. Don snagged a deer in the hour that his mom, the kids, and I were meeting him and his dad at The Cabin \u2013 yes, that will always be capitalized. It was evening by the time he got the deer to The Cabin. Well, evening and our wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n He strung the deer up between our Cabin and his parents\u2019 Cabin. I don\u2019t think he meant to terrorize his mother with an inverted deer 10 steps from her Cabin door but hey, it wasn\u2019t her <\/em>anniversary.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As Don\u2019s mom regained her wits, I got to thinking. I can make all of this go away. Not by eradicating hunting. Long hunting trips that leave me flying solo are my justification for paying Hulu and Netflix to entertain me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n No. He continues to hunt. But I <\/em>do the butchering.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Think about it. I don\u2019t make a mess. With anything. I don\u2019t terrorize my mother-in-law. She\u2019s mandated by law to love her son; he can abuse that all he likes. Me? I need to stay in that lady\u2019s good graces. I have a vested interest in protecting her from the menacing specter of field-dressed meat.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Weeks later, during another Cabin visit, I ask my father-in-law to show me how to butcher a pheasant. With his bare fingers, he finds purchase in the skin, pulling it off in one smooth piece.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, OK.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n He chops off the head and legs so smoothly I don\u2019t even realize it happened, and just then I appreciate another problem my butchering can correct. Do you know they, my husband and father-in-law, use the same ax for butchering as they do for chopping wood? You understand the problem, right?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Using the ax to dismember a pheasant makes the ax dirty. It will always be dirty. I mean, hello? Bird blood? I think that\u2019s probably full of parasites and brain-eating amoeba and tapeworm or something, right?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So now you\u2019ve taken the Pheasant Blood Ax and used it to chop wood. And many months later, you\u2019re picking up that wood. It\u2019s a 100% guarantee that you are touching that wood where the bloody ax touched the wood. By the Urban Dictionary definition of the transitive property, you now have that blood on you. Even if you can\u2019t see it. You\u2019re dirty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The only way to remove this level of dirt is to shower. And you can\u2019t touch anything else on your way to the shower because then that will be dirty too. Furthermore, you\u2019ve just thrown that tapeworm-infested bloody log onto the fire. Now we are all breathing in aerosolized pheasant blood amoeba. Nice going.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Let me guess. I\u2019m crazy, right? He butchers deer in the kitchen, but I\u2019m the crazy one? OK.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway, if I can butcher, that\u2019s one more wrong I can right.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hey. I\u2019ll be like Sam Beckett on Quantum Leap<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Like Sam, I have to consider the future. I have two hunters and anglers being raised in my house. That\u2019s a lot of animals left hanging outside of The Cabin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You\u2019d think with all of that meat lingering about I\u2019d be well on my way to being a butchering pro. But hunters are tetchy with their meat. Well, mine is anyway. And if you live with a hunter, you probably understand. You know what goes into getting that deer. In the entire United States, less than 50% of hunters get a deer during deer season. In the Northeast, where Don hunts, it\u2019s less than 40%<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen a video on how to butcher venison. Now I need hands-on training. I\u2019m contemplating getting a hunting license, hunting and butchering my own quarry when the universe gives me an assist. The 2020 BHA Rendezvous<\/a> announces a skills session in butchering, and guess who just happens to have tickets to Rendezvous<\/a>?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then coronavirus sweeps in and steals my dream. With Rendezvous postponed, do I wait? Do I take matters into my own hands?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I decide to use some of the time at home to get a hunting license. I ask Don what is involved, and how soon I can I use that license.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Pennsylvania, there\u2019s a hunter education course<\/a>. For $20, I can use the pandemic time to take the course online. And \u2013 good news here \u2013 once I pass, I can use my license right away. Of course the even better news is Don recruited a new hunter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes. That was sarcasm.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I explain my goal. If I can hunt something small myself, I can practice my butchering well ahead of the November deer season. By the time that rolls around, I should be proficient enough that Don can allow me to butcher his deer without concern that I\u2019ll, well, butcher it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don suggests turkey hunting, but I object. I need a quadruped mammal. If the cat I dissected as an undergrad was supposed to equate to human anatomy, wouldn\u2019t a squirrel\u2019s anatomy roughly approximate a deer\u2019s?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don disagrees. He offers to take me deer hunting. You know, I read a hunting article<\/a> where some deer hunting aces picked November 7th through November 10th as the best days to hunt deer. How convenient that my wedding anniversary is November 9th. I am instantly suspicious.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Also, I\u2019ll cry if I\u2019m successful.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wendirank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-27-at-7.57.24-AM-300x300.png\")
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