His eyes were crinkled and kind and his Arak was deadly smooth. We sat cross-legged in a semi-circle on the cool orange tiles of the platform where business was conducted, guests were received and Arak was shared, slyly appearing in front of you in a small round glass. The air was thick and humid, buzzing with dragonflies, the endless wailing of a cat in heat and the unknowable language of chickens that scratched and clucked in the dirt yard around us.
Arak is the locally made palm-sugar liquor across Indonesia, including here in Duku, the village that sat scattered and wild at the base of Mt. Agung, Bali’s largest and most unpredictable volcano. We were there for business - to meet with the village Treasurer, Ketut, and discuss a path forward to reforest the mountainside and hopefully boost the living standards of the villagers. The professional nature of our visit, however, was no deterrent to Jero, the old man who gently distributed the Arak glass by translucent glass round the circle until it was no more.
The man was a spiritual leader in Duku and as such donned himself in crisp ceremonial white as he mounted his motorbike and navigated the rough volcanic terrain to oversee spiritual matters the nature of which I will never know. His voice was soft, inviting you to lean forward as it rose and fell in mellow hypnotic waves. But his calm demeanor and soft-spokenness did not preclude him from another less pacific past-time here in Indonesia - rooster fighting.
For days I had been drilling Made about the details of this practice with a combination of revulsion and morbid curiosity. In reality, I had seen signs of its existence for as long as I’d been here in Indonesia - ubiquitous dome shaped cages made of palm fronds, each with an indignant rooster rutting about inside. But I had simply written these off as techniques to pacify naughty roosters - not specialized pens to house increasing blood-thirsty cocks. But apparently my cotton candy soft American sensibilities have a lot to learn in the way of brutalizing animals for sport.
I had formed a general picture in my mind of the way the event rolled out after my talks with Made - I pictured a smoky, dimly lit room with a tight circle of sweating men muttering and shouting around a pair of furious roosters. I had learned that the women sold beer and other refreshments on the outskirts and that rooster fighting was big business here in Indonesia and indeed, in many countries around the world. But I hadn’t seen the blades until that day in the man’s courtyard at the base of the volcano.
Upon request, he brought forth a small handmade triangular leather bag with a gentle smile. It was divided into individual pages like a book and within each page two small blades were secured - about two inches in length, one straight, one slightly curved, each sharp as sin. They varied according to the rooster’s leg structure Made explained. Depending on the size and curvature, the straight or curved blade was chosen and carefully tied, enhancing both the rooster’s natural spur and instinct to slash its rival and assert its dominance or in this case, murdering him for profit.
Despite the rooster’s ingrained violence, training was required from an early age to stoke their urges and refine their technique. Preparation consisted of holding two roosters beak to beak and roughly tapping the area above their wings before letting them go. Like miniature velociraptors, they would jump and thrust their spurs at one another, trying to hit the soft parts of their opponent before regrouping and trying again. They would dive and roll at times trying to gain the upper edge by grabbing onto the red comb of their rival with their beaks in an attempt to pin them to the ground. Gruesomely, another technique to prevent the rooster from gaining an edge is to slice off said comb, at times feeding it to him as well.
Jero’s book contained about twenty blades; later Ketut would proudly boast of his top prize-fighter that bested his opponent 14 times, overcoming his injuries to eventually enter the ring again each time. This was right around the time I was graciously given a demonstration to see what all the fuss was about. Sometimes I wish I could just keep my mouth shut and stop asking so many questions.
It was after our second day of tromping around the base of the volcano that we found ourselves once again, reclining on those cool orange tiles, eating milk bananas and sipping sweet hot tea. Again I started in with my peppering of questions related to all things rooster fighting and before I knew it Ketut and another man had retrieved two roosters and plunked them down in the dust less than one beak length away from one another and too close for comfort from me.
One rooster had the decided advantage of bulk and superior plumage. (another observation I had that day is that roosters and chickens in general have some damn nice feather arrangements - some deep crimson, rust and green, some speckled cream and yellow, some gold and blue...turns out, domesticated chickens originate from this corner of the world, from the infamous red jungle fowl, gallus gallus, that was first domesticated approximately 5,000 years ago.)
The roosters circled each other warily, beady eye pinned to beady eye. They seemed a bit unmotivated if I was to be honest. One minute hanging with his respective brood of girls, pecking for a grain here and there, the next rudely shoved before a crowd, expected to slash his opponent to ribbons. Perhaps they could feel the expectant energy radiating at them from the circle of eyes around them, performance pressure as you will. But eventually, the very act of being placed in this circumstance beak to beak with another moody cock conjured the required homicidal surge of feeling. In a second the roosters were a tumbling, shrieking ball of feathers, rising up in the air and rolling around in the dirt, their striking talons a blur of skin and nail. The pair separated, feathers gently wafting back down to earth, circled again and lept back again at one another perhaps once or twice more before being snatched away by the rooster wranglers. I was relieved to see no visible signs of damage, just two indignant cocks annoyed at being rudely plucked from their peaceful reverie.
Wow, I murmured to my hosts, …cool (no it really wasn’t). Aside from my ironclad rule of avoiding the degradation of animals for sport (insert bullfighting, dog fighting), I couldn’t honestly see what all the fuss was about. Perhaps that’s why some bored man somewhere came up with the notion of blades, a bit of carnage to get the juices flowing. I was thankful to be spared the most gruesome aspect of the ritual anyway. To be fair, watching two animals gouge each other I suppose is no different than watching boxing, MMA fighting or any of the latest sadistic series cooked up by HBO for pleasant, popcorn viewing. Turns out we humans are just a sick bunch that like a bit of violence.
I wondered how the roosters felt about it on the other hand if they felt anything at all. Maybe they hated it, loathed it, dreaded the moment they were placed in the ring. Maybe they felt a spark of pride in their pea sized brains after years of training and the moment of victory after vanquishing their opponent. Possibly they liked it, it felt good to get those claws stretched and working again and have a bunch of panting men cheering your name. Maybe after a win they were treated with extra pets, extra hens and a wondrous smorgasbord of grains and greens.
We humans tend to think of chickens as mindless automatons, which perhaps mitigates the secret bloom of shame we feel knowing how badly they are treated on our behalf. But evolving research is changing our understanding of both the role chickens played in human society as well as the autonomy they possessed in dictating the path of their own destiny. The latest findings indicate the rise of dry rice farming in Southeast Asia in 1500 BC was the spark that lured the wild jungle fowl down from the trees and set it on a path of domestication and a long, complicated history with human beings. In this sense, we can view chickens as strategic, scoping out the new, nice smelling grains those two legged, hairy apes had to offer. Chickens were then smuggled off across Asia and then throughout the Mediterranean by Phoenician, Greek and Etruscan sailors. In Europe, during the Iron age, chickens were not regarded as food, but rather venerated for the feathered demigods they are, buried alone and unbutchered.
Now chickens have earned their place as the most numerous domesticated animal in the world. And we all know the endless undignified manifestations this designation has earned them. But anyone who has spent time with a chicken knows they like a good cuddle as they crouch expectantly, waiting to be picked up. Or the sweet chorus of coos that greet you each morning when you go to check on your girls. Perhaps we would be wise to remember, it was the chicken that chose us, not the other way around. Maybe it is time to revisit and renew their status as demigod, to let them dazzle us with the merits of their plumage and sweet nature alone and put the blades to rest.
* Names have been changed to respect the central characters of the story