It was Feb 13, 1983, Sunday, a day before the much-anticipated Valentine’s Day. It was also a bad day for us college seminarians—it turned out to be. We were deprived of our regular afternoon outing just because of an egg. Yes, a hard-boiled egg!
Somebody took the hard-boiled egg from the plate of an absent seminarian before we said the grace before meal. The Prefect of Discipline wanted to know who took it. But nobody confessed. So the entire body was punished. “No outing this afternoon,” Fr. Migs declared.
Everyone grumbled.
But we had our way of coping. We learned from our psychology class that it was called sublimation. We joked about it and proposed using what we learned in class to “sublime” our frustration. Eventually, our joke turned into an actual plan, and we banked on sublimation to rationalize what we were about to do.
So that afternoon, we armed ourselves and scoured the seminary for stray chicks—or rather, chicken. Not finding any, we turned our attention to the clucking chicken inside the seminary coop. There were at least seven of us (including some from the Seniors class like Bobong, Ping, and others) who tried to coax the chicken to flee from the coop. We reasoned out that once they were outside the “cage of responsibility” of the seminary, it was fair game.
O, what a grand time we had chasing chicks on the eve of Valentine's Day! We hunted them down with stones, sticks, airguns, and tirador. Soc carried a stick, I had my trusty tirador with me. McAbs, a dead shot with the airgun, was more interested in the swallows that nested on the steel-stilted water tank. Ingents caught a couple without firing a gun by trapping them in the bushes and grabbing them before they could utter a sound. The poor chicken could only manage to flap their wings as Ingents, looking like Fred Flintstone, held them tightly around the neck.
Bobong continued the hunt, holding the gun with one hand, the muzzle only two inches from a trapped chicken’s temple. The chicken didn’t stand a chance. I don’t know what killed the chicken, though, whether it was the pellet or the blast of air.
All in all, three chickens were hastily dispatched and expertly cleaned and dressed by Ingents. These were washed with water from two Coca-Cola bottles. We built a fire among the shrubs, and like pre-historic cannibals feasting on a game, we dined our Valentine’s outing way. (nox arcamo)
