Warning: do not read further if you are vegetarian!

I asked around and few of the others in my class if they were at the hotline. In most of the restaurants, the chef or the sous chef are the only ones who supervise the cooking of the meat, not the lowly interns (usually right below the apprentices and above the dishwashers in the kitchen hierarchy). So I guess I should be honored that the Chef last week granted my wish to spend my last day at the grill. He sent me to the meat, and not the fish station.
Working at the meat station implies handling raw flesh. After lunch was over, I was given the task of preparing the pigeons that I had just seen being cooked and served. I was enthusiastic at the idea of doing something new, and thought I was really tough, working the meat station with my own knives. I had no idea what I was in for. I was given a huge box which contained over a dozen birds with their feathered heads still on, their sharp beaks and eyes tightly shut. This must be some kind of sign of freshness, to keep the heads on, as the Chef had once paraded a headed chicken wrapped like a papoose around the kitchen like a proud father with a newborn baby. The cook who was showing me what I had to do took a bird, stretched it a bit, grabbed some shears and cut off three of its toes, leaving the middle one intact. This one he shortened with a swift snap. Then with a cleaver, he clipped the wings, and the tail. Finally he pulled the head, performed a precise incision along the neck, lifted the skin covered with pristine white feathers off and gently tugged on the skinned neck, cut the skin, and then brought his cleaver down over the neck, beheading the animal.
So I tell myself (the cook has already left at this point, without noticing my bewildered look), “well, you’re a cook, you like challenges, you can do this, it’s not as bad as that box of furry rabbits at the other restaurant.” I grabbed a pigeon and started pulling. The sight of the intact head was appalling but so were the feet with their granular surface and the hooked nails. I cut the toes off, then the wings, then the ass. I made a cut through the skin of the next, through the feathers, and loosened the skin. I cut the skin, then the neck. At that moment, the most ridiculous and disgusting thing happened: grains of corn started falling on the chopping board. Whole, dried, bright yellow kernels and some wheat too. I don’t know why, but I found that more revolting than anything else, almost obscene in an indescribable way. Almost all the birds had them, their not yet digested food tumbling out of their dead bodies.