Cockfighting

Head nestled into the chest of the man holding him, he looks comfortable. As if it’s a daily occurrence. Today his twitchy eyes notice there are more people watching as his leg is attended to, but he’s still relaxed. Maybe it’s some basic medical attention or grooming. He’s probably unaware there’s a razor-sharp blade being tied to his ankle so he can be thrown before a baying crowd in a bloody fight to the death. He’s just relaxed. He got up at 3 am to crow and wake up the neighbourhood then strut around like a hero. Just another normal day. Now he’s ten minutes from a brutal death or a gory triumph. He is a cock in the Philippines. And the Philippines loves its cockfighting.

The world’s come a long way in the past millennium that began with gladiatorial fights for survival staged purely for the viewing pleasure of the public. As human rights began to sprout its whiny face we progressed to animal combat to quench our thirst for visual blood and suffering. Dogs, as man’s best friend, were readily available and easily agitated to become the logical next step, and then bears were unfortunate enough to draw nature’s short-straw and the sickening recreation of bear-baiting was a prime time hit for the upper classes well into nineteenth-century England. As societies have advanced and animal rights have joined the social consciousness these sports have diminished, but cockfighting – the world’s oldest spectator sport dating back 6,000 years in Persia - has remained an ever-present. In the Philippines, where it’s the national sport it occurs year round, derives enormous income and receives national television coverage. For Greenpeace to march in and try to ban it would be like trying to disarm America. No matter what everyone else thinks and all the negative connotations associated with the practice, it’s not easy to change something so engrained into a nation’s past and culture.

Sitting under a tin roof in the tropics, a soft breeze is the only relief from the stifling humidity. There’s a strange smell in the air; a mixture of cigarettes, blood, stale beer, sweat and chicken shit. Previous losers hang dead from the surrounding fences like warning signs for those to follow. The punters loiter around the outskirts between fights wearing knock-off American brand t-shirts, sharing cigarettes and watching the next competitors being dressed for their slaughter.  Tape is wound around the foot and a three-inch deadly metal talon is fixed into place and covered with a sheath. This is death row. A winning fighter will have any injuries stitched up by a ringside doctor and will fight again another day. This will repeat until he ultimately loses. The loser is tonight’s dinner. The only chance at survival is to win with an irreparable injury and be put out to stud amongst the hens. This is hard to pull off, especially for a chicken.

The crowd moves into the viewing gallery as the fight time nears and a nervous excitement sweeps over me. I’m no vegetarian, even calling myself an animal-lover would be a stretch, but I’m a fan of animals. I enjoy their company and am strongly opposed to killing them for sport or pleasure. Those who do so are making up for some other personal deficiencies, and I think people who get some sick, psychotic thrill out of torturing animals deserve the same treatment as our worst terrorists and rapists. I do eat animals daily, though, and have never considered doing otherwise. As the fighters are carried into the ring – or octagon – and are paraded in front of the audience I try to justify my being there.

Most of the chickens I’ve ever eaten in my life were likely raised in cages, beak to beak with other chickens and fed cheap grain before being mass slaughtered and packaged. In contrast these fighters are free range, raised on farms or in villages and allowed a comfortable existence until their terrifying demise. It’s still probably better than being raised for KFC. These ones are going to be killed and eaten anyway - I tell myself - so why not derive some income first in a country where thousands of girls turn to the sex trade and thousands more have nowhere to turn at all. The winner’s owner takes a cut of the total revenue, the bookies take their share, the announcers and ticketing staff are paid, and because every fighter has odds of 2:1 the winning gamblers take as much as the house. Plus there’s the recreational value of bringing communities together and keeping them entertained. With all these positives it’s still hard not to feel like a massive hypocrite.

With the start of the fight nearing, the fighters are held in their respective corners and the crowd goes into a frenzy. One corner is named Wala, the other Meron, and that’s all people shout for the next chaotic minute as arms wave in the air calling out their pick and the bookies somehow keep track. I put 200 pesos (about $5) on Wala, mainly because it’s closer to me than the other one and its blade looks particularly deadly close up. The announcer makes a speech, the crowd hushes and the cocks are dropped on the floor in front of each other.

Chickens have done rather well as a species considering their physical shortcomings and inability to defend themselves from predators. If they weren’t domesticated they never would have survived as flightless ground-dwellers, but by accepting the protection of people they have also put themselves at man’s mercy. And this is the result. It’s a fairly tame start. The combatants ignore each other, stepping about and pecking at the floor like they had been doing outside earlier. Roosters are natural fighters, usually a hormone-driven ritual showdown that will leave them injured but alive. Being thrown into a confined space, provoked and heavily armed in an intimidating atmosphere isn’t natural, it’s artificial and contrived. After a minute with no action they are picked up again, aggressively thrust at each other a couple of times and dropped together again. This lights the fuse. Wings flap and feet slash down on each other. With money on the line I can’t help but feel some blood driven sentimentality and I find myself on my feet, demanding death with the rest of the patrons. After a brief but frenetic moment of fury, amidst a cloud of feathers the opponent drops flat and lays dead. My Wala has won. A swift strike of the blade has pierced Meron’s neck and he is now dead on the floor. The victor carries on with his strutting and pecking. Half the crowd cheers and I’m handed my 200 pesos worth of winnings. The victor is carried off for any required medical attention and the loser is carried away by the feet, a trail of blood dripping on the floor.

This fight lasted about thirty seconds. A number of fights follow throughout the day, some are over quickly, some last for minutes but seem like an eternity. A gory, brutal marathon where neither cock wants to die but one ultimately does. In bullfighting – another questionable and archaic blood ‘sport’ – the bull will always die whether he wins or loses. It’s not a sport but organised murder entertainment. It’s hard to classify cockfighting as a sport, but at least it’s a fair fight.

  

Nearing the end of the day, before the final fight when the crowd is at its peak a crippled lady is carried into the cockpit and sat down on a chair. She looks no older than 20. Unable to walk, her legs dangle off her body, a lifeless hindrance. She crosses her arms on her lap and her sunken, bony face stares into space while the announcer speaks into the microphone about her. I don’t know what he says but within seconds a hail of money is being thrown into the ring. Notes are rolled into balls and sail in alongside coins of all sizes. It continues until the floor is littered with cash, then every piece is collected into a shopping bag and handed to the lady. She is then given a piggy-back ride off the stage. Her expression never changes. It’s hard to imagine another setting that would induce such a benevolent response. The Philippines doesn’t have a fantastic disability welfare program that she can rely on. This cockfight is a blessing for her.

The final fight is a gruesome anti-climax of a quick kill and the day’s events are over. The bookies collect their tips and given my success throughout the day I give mine a generous amount and ask him what he’ll be doing with the earnings, expecting a celebration to be part of the answer. He says he’ll give it to his wife to buy food for his two young children before he rides his motorbike-taxi until midnight. I ask him how old he is and he tells me he’s 19. Working at the cockfights as a bookie twice a week is half his weekly income. As I exit the arena there are dead roosters hanging from the fence, blades removed and a pool of dried blood on the ground below. Some of them are being dropped into grocery bags to be taken home and cooked. I’m still not sure what to think. 

Baby on a Plane

The most irritating thing in the world might just be a crying baby on an aeroplane. There’s nothing at all you can do. You just have to sit and bear it. You can’t leave the room or hop off. Never in your life will you be so absolutely powerless. The drone of the engine drowns out the aimless chitter-chatter of the passengers but it is powerless against the high-pitched screams of an uncomfortable infant. As much as you want to scream back, or yell at the parent, you can’t. If you do say anything you are now the culprit: the heartless thug who yelled at a baby. Forget the fact you paid one thousand dollars to sit in an uncomfortable chair for eight hours staring at the back of another uncomfortable chair, you are now going to be audibly invaded with no control or say in the matter while the parent sits patiently waiting for the outburst to finish. They feel bad for their little angel, but don’t actually do anything to remedy the situation. And it’s not the baby’s fault. It’s just a baby. It doesn’t know where the fuck it is or why its ears feel funny. The parent, however, knows perfectly well that her very young offspring is prone to glass-shattering outbursts and knew it was more than likely that at high altitude in a confined space it would probably be worse than usual. But this doesn’t concern them. They don’t consider the other hundred people being inconvenienced and go on their holiday anyway, a holiday the child won’t ever remember and may as well have been spent splashing about in a blow-up pool in the backyard at home.

A crying baby is the one thing you can’t call a stewardess for. If your meals wrong, if you don’t know how to fill out your arrival card or if you want an extra pillow you just press a button and they’ll do anything within the realm of possibility to make the flight more bearable and comfortable for you. But ask them to put a muzzle on a crying infant or tell the parent to shut it up and they are as helpless as the rest of us. For all the rudeness, arrogance and disrespect they encounter every flight from passengers, with a manufactured smile and award-worthy tolerance, there is no procedure manual for a crying baby and its languid parent. The best they can offer is a gentle stroke of the head and a compassionate ‘aw, it’ll be okay, darling,’ before pushing the trolley away down the aisle.

A great anomaly of this Earth we all inhabit is that humans have dominated all species despite being so completely and utterly useless for the first few years of our life. Foals walk out of the womb. Reptiles and birds have to peck a hole in a shell and climb out. A human baby has to be carried everywhere, have food delivered directly to their mouth and be cleaned after defecating to prevent them lying permanently in their own shit. They shouldn’t be in an aeroplane.

As I write this another one has started up. A long, slobbery moan broken up by intermittent screeches that startle all around it. Catching a glimpse it isn’t even a baby. This kid could be two or three-years-old and the mother is next to him, reading a book and ignoring him, deciding that a crowded international flight is the best place to apply this new tough-love parenting technique. It’s clearly not working as he starts to increase the volume and kick the seat in front of him at the expense of the lady sitting in it. But you can’t expect much from a woman stupid and naïve enough to take her child of this age on a flight of this length.