KEEPING IT CLEAN; or, HOW TO LIVE BY THE LAW

we will not be eating the fallen hen. i'm going to assume that all of our readers are strict vegetarians (the strictest of, even!) and have never had to question the circumstances of the deaths of their meals and that that's why no one wrote to warn us that eating meat that wasn't slaughtered is awfully dangerous. to be clear: you shouldn't eat a chicken that died of fright in your backyard. you also shouldn't eat it if it braves the raccoon invasion but then gets killed by the raccoon. it's something about the postmortem release of toxins, and possibly botulism. thankfully, our hen plucker seems to have known better and wouldn't have let us put the thing in our mouths after it was gutted anyway. (we would have been saved despite your neglect.) apparently forest agreed to help because he thought we were interested in dissection -- which it turns out one of us is.

the thought of a courage chicken stew was a nice one, but it's best we keep it clean. what's more, had we eaten of the stew we would also have incurred the wrath of the lord. eating meat found dead is prohibited by both leviticus 7:24 AND leviticus 22:8. and you know how we do our best to abide by leviticus. (be scorned all poly-fiber blends!) even worse, eating the stew would have meant sacrificing our rabbinical aspirations, because it's pretty clear from ezekiel 44:31 that priests should stay away from the meat of birds not slaughtered by man.

so we dodged a bullet, one that could have cost us our lives as well as our relationship with the god of the old testament. live and learn, i suppose. there is such a thing as being too clean and too careful, but keeping it clean in this case paid off. we can't (and won't) proscribe anyone's chosen way of life, but there are some lessons that you'd like to see friends avoid learning the hard way -- even if those friend don't pay you the same consideration. so kids, we know you're going to do what you're going to do, but when you can, do your best to use a condom, ok? i am the lord!