Alex! At Christmas dinner, my mother leaned over to me with a conspiratorial look on her face. She’s never truly lost the flair for the dramatic and even then, she took a rather long pause before speaking, to make sure that she had not only my attention but that of her eavesdropping sister, my Aunt Drusilla, before she inhaled and stage whispered.
‘So did you see the chicken?’
Thinking that perhaps she had confused the malnourished turkey that my Mafia Grandma was preparing using perhaps the Hiroshima culinary method, I nodded and said ‘Grandma’s?’
‘No, no, no’ the chicken in our neighborhood! The chicken!’
Lest you think that perhaps my mother had dipped into the Christmas Bounce a tad early (surprisingly, she seemed to stay away from the spirits this year), there is an actual chicken on the main cross street that connects my house with my mother’s. She drives that street each day to pick up my little brother from school.
The first time I saw the chicken, Esteban was driving us somewhere, and I just started giggling. ‘A chicken! That was a chicken! A chicken in suburbia! That was totally a chicken!’ It was like a hallucination. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but so it was. A reddish chicken happily pecking for grit upon the front porch of a little brick bungalow about five blocks from our house. ‘Go back! Go back!’ I pleaded with the Burgermeister, but he refused. He just didn’t see the inherent adventure in the Green Bay Chicken Emergency.
I had shrugged it off, but then a week later, I was driving along and there it was again. Same chicken, same porch. It was such an anomaly, that chicken with his feathers fluffing in the arctic breeze. Esteban immediately became concerned for the chicken, but as I pointed out, he’d managed to escape becoming a Banquet Frozen Entr’e so he was either a very canny feral chicken or someone’s pet.
‘Oh yes! The red chicken on Newberry. Yes, I’ve seen it.’
‘It’s really comical.’ That’s my mother’s favorite term. Everything’s comical. People are comical and now livestock is comical. ‘If you talk to it, it will run away.’
‘Talk to it? You talked to the chicken?’ I asked skeptically.
‘Well, of course. I rolled down my window and tried calling to him, but he ran away behind the house. I think he’s afraid someone will steal him and eat him.’
You know’ because chickens are the logisticians of the barnyard.
‘Mother&AO8AvwC9AO8AvwC9- I began but she rolled her eyes and I did too. Try as I might, I always end up taking on my exasperated sixteen-year-old mentality with my mother and her crazy chicken conversations. ‘Don’t talk to strange livestock.’
‘Weetabix&AO8AvwC9AO8AvwC9- She countered, matching my exasperated tone perfectly. ‘It’s not every day you get to meet a free range chicken in your neighborhood. I was just being friendly.’
Ladies and Gentlemen, My Mother. Give her your poor, your weak, your beady eyed masses yearning to peck and scratch.
The difference here, in case you’re confused, is that while I wanted to go back and take a look at the chicken, I wouldn’t have actually attempted to TALK to it. Because that’s just crazy Eee Eye Eee Eye Oh logic right there.
The chicken does not need a prop. Because my mother will try to talk to it. Gah.
Dear Santa,
If I promise to be a good little Bix and not make my dolls do bad things, will you have Drowning13 update every day? Pretty please? I’ll leave you cookies next year!
Kisses,
Weetabix
