Dear cory:

is there such a thing as a cornish game cock, and have you ever eaten one? –avian agrarian

Dear AA:

Another missive from a correspondent who eschews capitalization! A trend? Your question led Cory to Lilydale Poultry and to British Columbia’s Chicken Marketing Board, where the PR people were most helpful. Not about what has been in Cory’s mouth (that is the bailiwick of the Guinness Book of World Records) but about poultry lore.

How sad it is that as soon as we scratch the surface of anything these days, we find spin, fraud and deception. The phrase “Cornish game hen” summons to mind a handsome gamekeeper carrying to the eager squire a brace of fine birds for the groaning manor table. Cory licks his little puce lips thinking of the rich gamey flavour developed after wild birds hang in the chill larder for a few days.

Well, it may have been that way when Cornwall was not a strip mall, but now Cornish game hens are just adolescent regular — and flavourless — chickens (cocks OR hens) that suffer not only death but the further indignity of deceptive, upscale packaging and inflationary pricing. Cory supposes they are too squeamish and homophobic to put up signs at Safeway saying: “Cock”. Only older roaster fowl are female. Poultry sexers (if you have ever seen bird genitals you will appreciate that their skill verges on the psychic) separate the doomed males from the female future roasters. One wonders if the male chicks go into sandwiches at a well-known fast food outlet, feathers and all, but that’s a tangent. You think you have one thing in your mouth, and it turns out to be quite another. Cory hopes in future columns to spare some of your illusions.