I spent twenty minutes with a rotisserie chicken's clamshell, convinced I was three millimeters away from cracking the code. By minute twenty-one, I'd created a crime scene that would make a forensics team weep—shredded plastic everywhere, a chicken that looked like it had survived an air strike, and the scissors bent at an angle that suggested I'd been trying to open a titanium safe. My partner walked in, took one look at the wreckage, and asked if the chicken had fought back. I told her the chicken won.