No One Here But Us

No One Here But Us Chickens

Acidman's story about his chickens reminded me of my own chicken story.
When I was a little girl, for some ungodly reason, my parents decided to move to the middle of nowhere, aka: Mississippi.
We lived in a house that was at the end of a short dirt road. We were surrounded by lush green fields with big fat cows dotting the horizon. There was a small fishing pond under large oak trees to one side that I loved to fish from.

On that short dirt road that led to our small house, there were three large chicken houses.
They were long buildings, built like horse stables. You could go through the front doors and it was a straight shot all the way to the back doors. The chickens were in stalls along the walls.
I'm not sure how often this would occur but during the night, trucks would pull up to the chicken houses and load all the chickens up to be taken to "chicken heaven".
They would leave the doors open (to air out, I suppose) until they filled the houses up again with more chickens. On those mornings, I would ride my bike through the houses, in and out, zig-zagging through all three. One day, after my chicken house ride, I was on my way back up the dirt road headed home when I saw something moving in a bush. I rode closer to inspect and caught a glimpse of something white. What could it be? Now, most intelligent people would automatically assume that the white thing in the bush outside of a newly emptied chicken house was, in fact, a chicken. However, I apparently was not that intelligent and only 5 or 6 years old because I just KNEW it was a fluffy white BUNNY.

I sped up to the house, laid my bike down without even bothering with the kickstand and ran inside to get my dad.
"There's a bunny in the bushes, Dad!" I screamed breathlessly. "Please catch him for me! I want him!"
Surprisingly enough, he got up and went outside with me. I say surprisingly because I remember my dad being pretty damn lazy and always made my mother do everything for him. My mother probably wasn't home at the time. Actually, that explains a lot.

He walked down the road with me and bravely put his hand in the bush to retrieve the white creature. I was so excited, picturing coming home from school everyday to feed and play with my cute little white bunny rabbit.
Instead of pulling out a rabbit from the bush like an outdoor magician, he pulled out a.....say it with me folks....a chicken.
Strangely, I wasn't that disappointed. I had worked myself into such a frenzy of excitement, I probably would have been overjoyed if he pulled out a white sock.
My dad was holding this renegade chicken. This brave fowl who broke free from it's captors and hid in the bushes was going to be mine! All mine!

Dad built a small area in the backyard to house my new pet. I named him Lincoln, God only knows why. I had a habit of giving strange names to pets. I particularly remember a puppy I wanted to name Suitcase. A family friend suggested Satchel. I agreed.

Anyway, my childhood memory is hazy and what seemed like a year could have been a month or vice versa but I know that I did have Lincoln for a while and I hope that I made a good life for him since he narrowly missed "chicken heaven". A chicken that wants to live that bad deserves a good life.
His good life didn't last. However hazy my childhood memories may be, I do remember this day in amazing detail.
I had just gotten home from school and I remembered that we had chocolate ice cream and cones from the night before. I couldn't wait to get in there and make myself an ice cream cone.
While eating my precious ice cream, I decided to go see Lincoln. Oh, life was good for this 6 year old. I had chocolate ice cream, school was out and I was going to go see my special pet chicken. I was actually skipping across the backyard, ice cream cone in hand when I stopped dead in my tracks. There was something white stuck to the fence. I moved closer and saw there were blood and feathers all over the fence as well. I realized that the white something was actually Lincoln, sans head.
I let out a blood-curdling scream, dropped my cone and ran into the house.

We'll never know what exactly happened to poor old Lincoln, but it is believed an animal of some sort, like a fox or weasel, decided that Lincoln's head would make a good dinner. Stupid weasels. Don't they know that chicken breasts and legs are the best pieces??

Posted by De at October 20, 2003 09:39 PM