A dead rooster was dropped in the middle of an intersection in our
neighborhood recently (Springfield and Belle Plaine). It was smashed
(from having been run over?) and seemed to have had its entrails
pulled out deliberately. A neighbor reports having seen other dead
roosters over the years, in the same intersection as well as in
others. Our police department liaison says its unlikely that there’s a
cock-fighting connection but can’t come up with any other explanation.
Gang initiation? Voodoo ritual? Urban-chicken rumble? What’s the poop,
Cece? --My Aim Is True
In Haitian voudoun, Papa Legba is associated with crossroads, and is sacrificed roosters. In other traditions more or less the same guy is called Eshu or Ellegua. Could be one of those.
Maybe I’m missing the obvious here… when animals get crushed under the wheels of a road vehicle, the guts coming out is pretty much the norm. Couldn’t it just be a poultry RTA?
I live in a major urban center but there are a bunch of people who own roosters and chickens in these parts. To immediately assume that voodoo rituals have been taking place is sort of silly. It was probably just roadkill and I wouldn’t be surprised if the “careful decapitations” are exaggerated descriptions conjured from overactive imaginations.
Hey, I’m not assuming anything, just throwing it out there since the question was asked. Voodoo and Santeria aren’t entirely unheard of down here on the Gulf, and they do sacrifice chickens; they even had a case heard in the U.S. Supreme Court guaranteeing them the right, Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah. Chances are pretty good it’s just roadkill, but if they had enough roosters in their neighborhood that they’re getting out and getting squashed on a regular basis, they’d probably know it - the damn things are loud.
Maybe there is something going on, but someone living nearby and keeping chickens within a poorly-maintained fence could just as easily result in a similar pattern.
Not saying it isn’t some sort of ritual - it’s just that the evidence doesn’t seem utterly compelling.
Yeah - if I happened across multiple dead roosters in the intersection of the neighborhood I live in now it might raise an eyebrow, but in the neighborhood downtown of my old office my reaction would be more like “those guys need to keep their roosters locked up better.”
Seriously, keeping chickens in urban areas (for pets/for eggs) is one of those old fashioned new ideas that’s gained some popularity. Chickens will get out and run around if they can, with sometimes tragic results.
Given the location and the local population, Vodou isn’t a bad guess at all. It’s far more likely than chicken raising in that neighborhood. I believe raising chickens is still illegal here, although Evanston to the north just made raising up to 10 hens (*only *hens) legal.
Given the reported location of the ex-chicken in the middle of the intersection, I’d be more inclined to lean toward ritual than a darting chicken getting nipped by a car - most road kill is near the curb, not the middle of the intersection. However, I’d also expect an offering to Papa Legba to have some writing underneath it. Cryptic looking symbols, most often with something looking like a compass in the center.Like this, but probably in chalk or corn meal. Either that was left out of the report, or it wasn’t present. If not present, then it’s more likely to be kids *playing *at Vodou than real Vodou.
The local Ifa group contains themselves to mostly indoor ritual, and pigeons are their sacrifice of choice for rituals where the meat can’t be consumed. So I doubt it’s them. (I’m not part of their group, but have several friends who have worked with them.)
I don’t know why people are so quick to think it couldn’t be Vodou. There are more Vodou practitioners than homesteaded chickens on the North/Northwest Side of Chicago!
Thinking it over, I decided to check on the chicken legality thing. It’s…hard to parse. There are lots of articles at least one rather funny YouTube video where police and city officials claim you can’t do it, but no one’s able to cite an ordinance or law specifically about it.
This article, written in March, assumes the legality of raising chickens, and claims that there are 148 members of “An online community group called “Chicago Chicken Enthusiasts”,” but admits they have no idea how closely that number correlates with the actual number of chicken raisers in the City.
Likewise, I can’t give you a number of Vodou/Ifa/Santeria/Yoruba/Umbanda etc. practitioners in the city. I know roughly 60 personally, but that’s a small portion of the whole. But again, given the populations (lots of West African and Haitian immigrants) in that area, I still bet it’s more than chicken owners. And what chicken owners there are may very well be raising them FOR the sacrifice.
My neighbor keeps urban chickens. She doesn’t cull the hatchlings, and therefore the flock becomes 50% roosters pretty quickly. The alpha males stay home and take over the flock; the betas go on walkabout. Some number of loser roosters fly into my backyard, where they meet my dog, who loves fresh chicken.
Depending on how recently he’s eaten, he may leave a chicken with “guts hanging out.” If I didn’t have better options for getting rid of the carcass, I’d consider dropping it out the window in the middle of an intersection.
