Daishiro drove deep. He drove hard. It didn't work. Instead of neat decapitation, the guillotine caused only messy, crushed bone. As the sorry son of the samurai failed again and again, he turned noisy and tense. So did the bird. The sink filled with feathers and blood.

Lovingly bred by the chicken fanciers of the English countryside, the Sebright bantam occupies a peculiar position in the pantheon of poultry: It has a feminine side. It's not so much that it's sensitive or in any way maternal. It's more that it looks like a hen. With black laced fringe on its feathers and large and rounded breasts, this ornamental fowl is celebrated, not marinated.

Kim Novak might have told you: Beauty has a secret. In the case of Ms. Novak, more correctly called Mr. Novak, male gender development can be arrested because of genetic mutation. In his case, the condition known as testicular feminization causes the receptor for male hormone to malfunction: It won't respond to testosterone. So that gorgeous babe on the screen may be a man.

Nature delights us with other gender benders. Consider, as you may have already, the spotted hyena. This ugly marauder of the planes has been endowed with an over-abundance of maleness, which affects everything from its lady parts to its behavior: It kills nearly everything it sees, which includes its little brothers as they first poke their faces out of mommy's manly vagina. Now there's a reason to laugh!

Which brings us back to the Sebright.