childhood memory

Whenever anyone mentions the phrase "running around like a chicken without its head" I instantly remember an early childhood experience.

I was a little girl, maybe 3-4 years old. My parents used to take me down to Olds where my grandparents had a farm. In the shelter belt tree line, they had a small wooden shed equipped with hooks and a small chopping block. This was where they beheaded the chickens. One of my earliest memories is standing in the white and freshly fallen snow. My hand knit mitts probably damp and frosty from playing in it. I had a one piece snowsuit. I think it was red and it had some sort of fluff trimmed hood and zipped up with a thick zipper and I had these little snow boots that were silver. I was standing there in the snow white snow in my little snowsuit and boots watching with slight curiosity and probably a little horror as my grandfather decisively swung the ax and hung the chickens to drain from the hooks. As I try and remember this early experience, I think back and see the trees standing tall and dark against the snow, the blur of adults around, standing there cold like my mittens against the site of a chicken or two running in circles without its head, the others caught and draining. White snow spashed red like my snowsuit.