el pollo gigante culo

(originally posted 3/25/2013)

The history of the “asshole chicken” dates back to the 1950’s in Brazil and to an American agricultural student Kerry Warwick. It began as an almost unbelievable request by a wealthy landowner near Sao Paulo. He had a wife who wanted to become a vegetarian but just didn’t have the willpower to give up eating her favorite meal- chicken. So in a very odd, somewhat convoluted yet completely understandable rationalization of being an omnivore, she decided she would only eat chickens that deserved to eaten because of their poor character.

That’s where Miss Warwick came in.

It was her job to visit all the local poultry farms in the area and watch for chickens that exhibited any signs of ill temperament or greediness or bullied their fellow fowl. As soon as she located one of the “asshole chickens” she would quickly purchase it and it would end up baked, fried or sautéed before it knew what hit it.

Not exactly putting her degree to great use but a job was a job.

Soon word got out amongst the jet set about what was going on in Sao Paulo and Miss Warwick was being inundated with requests for “asshole chickens.” It wasn’t long before she had a staff of workers combing the Brazilian countryside looking for disruptive elements amongst the chicken population. The troublemakers.  She couldn’t just pass along any chicken to her clientele; her credibility was everything, and she took great pains to document every offense committed by her feathered, fork-friendly fowl so that the consumer wouldn’t end up eating a bird that in retrospect would make them feel guilty. It wasn’t enough for a chicken to be disingenuous or shifty; they had to be caught acting like a Grade A asshole.

As more and more wannabe-vegetarians contacted her she knew that before long she wasn’t going to be able to meet the demand. Finally her education was given a chance to come into play.

She decided to start a farm where she would raise “asshole chickens.”

In only a matter of a few generations of cross-breeding the worst of the worst poultry, handpicked by Kerry herself, this farm had the biggest collections of “asshole chickens” you could imagine. You couldn’t peek into a cage for more than a few minutes before you saw some act of uninstigated cruelty inflicted by one bird upon another. Forget feeding time, workers would just fling in a handful of feed and run for the hills as these chickens would square off against each other in a no-holds barred Gallus domesticus throwdown. Clucking at all hours, flinging their shit all over, pecking anyone who even dared approached their coop.

What a bunch of assholes.

Nobody felt bad about eating these chickens. Every generation of bird a bigger asshole than the previous. Business was booming and there was even talk about starting the quest for “asshole pigs and cows.”

Then there was an incident.

Soon after a single rooster was crowned the biggest asshole to ever be produced by Miss Kerry’s ranch a new worker, one Joe Casebeer, mistakenly sold the rooster at a local farmers market. Before the error could be caught and el pollo gigante culo returned to the farm and served up to the highest bidder, the chicken disappeared.

Typical of that fucking chicken, let me tell you. Nobody, I mean nobody, had a nice word to say about that one.

Soon there were accounts from all over the area that their chickens were acting a bit like jerks. Not long after that there were reports of chickens acting like complete dicks. Of course the farmers tried to kill off any chickens showing signs of being full-blown assholes but it was too late. The “asshole chickens” soon started showing up in Argentina and there were even reports of chickens behaving like assholes as far north as Central America.

That was the late 1990s.

Recent population genetics analysis of “asshole chickens” in Mexico, using a materially inherited genetic marker, found ten distinct mitotypes, which suggests that these chickens have almost come home to roost in the United States.

Now that there has been such a proliferation of videos showing what assholes these chickens are there has been a significant drop in the number of people claiming to be vegetarians. In fact, even PETA is a bit on the fence about how these animals are treated. One organization leader was quoted as saying “Fuck those chickens.”

Sales exploded everywhere except at Chik-fil-A, where there was a concern by their patrons that homosexuality might be the root cause of their being such assholes.

Ironic indeed.