Such a Chicken

Several mornings ago I heard a loud commotion outside. It sounded like a chicken in distress. I went to the front porch and sure enough, a chicken in distress. It looked like a Bantam hen was being harassed by a black cat. I tossed a rock at the cat and the chicken showed its gratitude by hanging around for a couple of days. I like chickens, they are fun to watch, moving about with that mechanical sort of  stop-start way they have. Always cocking an eye at a potential snack just before the peck. We worked together in the yard. Me weeding, she pecking and poking away at anything freshly turned over or uprooted.

 She discovered nasturtium seeds that had dropped below the scraggly plant and appeared to have some sort of culinary chicken revelation, went a bit ga-ga, gobbling them right up. The shine went off the relationship when I became aware of the tremendous ability of a bird in quest of edibles to devastate, uproot and generally trash any established plants that were in its way, fertilizer deposits aside She was not an asset.

The neighborhood kids came strolling by. "Cloe, Do you recognize this chicken?" "No," she said. "That's our chicken" said Mica, "and it's a rooster". Three or four attempts at capture were met with "Is that all you got?" from the bobbin' and weavin' Bantam weight. I said I'd try to catch and deliver it for them later. After the bird settled down, I shamelessly set up a box, stick and string and baited it with a handful of raw, unsalted, shelled, organic, I believe gluten free pumpkin seeds. I poured myself a glass of our own Pinot Grigio, settled  on the porch steps and with the string wrapped around my hand got set to wait until the unsuspecting bird relaxed enough to duck under the box for the bait. It took about 10 seconds. I didn't even get to take a sip of wine. The bird went into the box, I yanked the string, the box fell, I slid the lid under the box and, Bob's yer uncle. 

I drank the wine and headed up the street to Mica's house. Mathew is Mica's dad. He and Joanne, his wife were in the hot tub. Matt was astonished that I had the rooster. He wrapped up in a towel and after I had released the bird into his coop he told me a most remarkable tale. 

This same bird had just come into "rooster-hood" and was practicing his "cock-a-doodle-do" with reckless abandon and god awful shrieks in the wee hours before dawn. A neighbor reported the racket to the local municipality. Matt had too many roosters and he couldn't give them away. They tried cooking and eating them, but the huge amount of effort, catching, killing, plucking, cooking these scrawny little Banties was a whole lot of work, so Matt resorted to what countless farmers before him have resorted to. He wrung its neck. He stared me straight in the eyes and said, "A whole twist and a half" then, "and back the other way just to be sure". The bird's eyes rolled up, it went limp, and Matt placed it in a plastic bag, tossed it in his truck for disposal and went inside to prepare for a day's work. Suddenly a great commotion broke out and he looked out in time to see our bird shrieking and running through the yard with the plastic bag hanging off him. He showed up at my place three days later impersonating a hen and eating my worms. 

This has all the earmarks of a great banned kids book.