Did You Know There's a Chicken in Your Kitchen?

Dear Boo and Bubble,

When your great uncle Gene was in middle school, his science class incubated a fertilized chicken egg and monitored its progress until a baby chick hatched.  The teacher pretty quickly realized that she had no personal use for a chicken and asked if any of the students might want to take it home.  Knowing that 3 Lakecrest sometimes resembled Noah’s Ark, Uncle Gene raised his hand. 

“I’ll take it,” he said.

The teacher put the chick in a box with some straw and when Mamaw Mary picked Gene up after school, he excitedly showed her the new addition to the family.

When they arrived home, Mamaw went up in the attic and retrieved an old aquarium.  She lined the bottom of it with torn newspapers, put in a bowl of water, then the chick, and covered the top with a baker’s rack that didn’t quite fit but, with a little duct tape, it stayed on.

The only satisfactory place to put the aquarium in the kitchen was right in the middle of the table, which was where we spent most of our time as the kitchen doubled for a den.  To her credit but not her desire, Mamaw decided against that and placed the aquarium on the buffet in the dining room.  She was concerned that the chick would get lonely, but it had to do.

As all of us gathered that evening for supper, the conversation centered around our new pet.  None of us knew much about chickens, although Granddaddy Schaefer acted like he did by asking whether it was a rooster or a hen and was it a Dominique or Bantam?  Since we didn’t know the answer to any of these questions, we settled on a simple solution in naming our feathered friend.  It would be – Chicken.

Chicken lived in that aquarium until he (the development of a red comb had revealed that he was indeed a rooster) filled out ever square inch of space.  Looking a lot like Quasimodo, Chicken stayed hunched over all day and night with one eye pressing up against the glass.  Mamaw finally figured out a solution.  She put our two fire screens together (one from the living room and one from the kitchen) and made a sort of pen for Chicken in the kitchen on the floor between the TV and the end of the table.  As we ate breakfast, Chicken scratched and jerked around in a circle right below The Today Show.  Come evening, Chicken continued his chicken-like behavior while we watched Bonanza or Ed Sullivan or Perry Como.

Your great uncle Bryant became concerned that Chicken never seemed to utter a sound.  He determined that, more than likely, this was due to the fact that Chicken had never been around other chickens and didn’t know how to talk.  Bryant took Chicken out of the pen, put him on a shoulder and began to “Bukkk, bukkkk, buh-bukkk” to Chicken in the hopes that the exercise would unleash some nascent communication skills.

Finally, Granddaddy Schaefer put his foot down.

“Mary,” he said, “We have GOT to get Chicken out of the house.  This is ridiculous.”

“Well, where do you suggest we put Chicken?” she answered.  “We don’t have anywhere in the yard that’s fenced.  Chicken won’t last a minute outside with all the dogs and cats around here.” 

“Bryant and I will put up a fence this weekend.  It shouldn’t take too long.”

On that Saturday morning, Granddaddy and Uncle Bryant marked off a section of the yard using the back porch (which was five or six steps up off the ground) as one of the sides.  With a posthole digger, they put in posts out from the porch, over a couple of feet and back to the porch, creating a rectangle.  They then stapled chicken wire around the rectangle.  Surveying his handiwork, Granddaddy announced that it was now time for Chicken to vacate the house.

Uncle Bryant went inside, retrieved Chicken and brought him out to the new pen.  We all watched in great anticipation.  Chicken stood, perched on one leg, absolutely frozen for the longest time.  He had never felt Mother Earth underneath his feet before.  Finally, he stretched his free foot gingerly forward and took a hesitant scratch.  Again….and again.  Then he actually took a step…and another.  Within thirty minutes or so, with a profound curiosity, he had covered the whole patch of newly-found freedom.

That night was Chicken’s first outside.  We all went to bed, feeling pretty good about the situation.

The next morning, precisely at sunrise, there came the most bloodcurdling sound.

“AAAAGGHHH……AAAAGGHHH….AAAAGGHHH.”

It sounded like a dying cow with laryngitis.

“AAAAGGHHH…..AAAAGGHHH….AAAAGGHHH.”

It woke everybody up at 3 Lakecrest and I’m sure the entire neighborhood as well.  We all raced down the hall into the kitchen.  Granddaddy Schaefer opened the door and there sat Chicken on the rail of the back porch proudly, if inelegantly, answering nature’s timeless genetic call for a rooster to crow when the sun comes up.

As honorable as this attempt to fulfill his destiny might have been, it proved to be Chicken’s undoing.  Granddaddy Schaefer felt that neither he nor anybody else should have to wake up to that horrific sound every morning.  With great dispatch, Granddaddy located somebody who could take Chicken off our hands. 

On occasion, I use an alarm clock to wake up.  Without fail, it reminds me of Chicken and I’ve often wondered about him….if he learned to crow and buh-buck properly once he integrated into the real chicken world.  It’s one of those things I guess I’ll never know.