One March day my neighbor Mark saw a chicken walking down the alley. The next day I noticed Mark and his wife Nancy moving back and forth on the pavement in front of my house, throwing bread at something in my yard.
Later that day they told me I’d had a chicken under my holly tree, and I told them they’d been smoking too much, again.
I came home and looked out the bathroom window and almost immediately saw a chicken strolling by. Unbidden, the name Henrietta sprang to my lips.
This is not the first time homeless animals have been living in my yard.
And that’s because there’s a big flashing neon sign above the yard that says, “Homeless? Hungry? Come One, Come All!”
That’s how I got Ink, the cat, 16 years ago, and Grace, the raccoon, and more, too numerous to mention.
Mark and Nancy bought chicken feed and tried to coax Henrietta over to their house, but she roamed around the block and left an egg under my rhodie. I kept an eye on what she was doing, but left her alone. I did not want a chicken.
I asked around but no one had lost a chicken. My neighbor Judy, a block away, has a flock of chickens, and said she’d take Henrietta, if we caught her. How do we do that? I wondered, and watched a few YouTube videos, which did not inspire me to try.
A week after arriving in the neighborhood (from where? still a mystery), Henrietta discovered my potting shed. She liked it in there just fine! I went in the first couple of nights and thought she must go elsewhere to sleep, because I couldn’t see her anywhere. It was David who looked up and spied her in the rafters, a good eight feet up, or more. I thought chickens couldn’t fly!
We left her alone for a few days thinking she’d get comfortable, and then we’d catch her. Meanwhile, I was getting attached to her. She developed a relationship with Ink. I felt sad and hoped I was doing the right thing, but I believed she would be better off with others of her kind.
David caught her and carried her down the alley as I told him to turn around so she could see how to get back, and I told her she could always come “home” if she needed to. He put her over Judy’s fence, and the chickens came running to meet her. I thought at first it would be all right, but I watched her for 40 minutes as she had a few fights, and ran away from a couple of the chickens.
She roamed the perimeter of the large yard, several times, then returned to where I was standing. I told her she just needed to find a friend and fit in, but she had a few more fights and was getting the worst of it.
And then, she jumped on the wire fence right in front of my face, close enough to kiss, and wobbled there for a few moments while I figured out how to grab her. She sort of fell into my arms and calmly let me carry her away (from that horrible place and those horrible hen-pecking chickens, where I never want to go again! she said).
She decided to hold me to my word about home. It was a very clear message!
I had been chosen….by a chicken. Which is an honor, except I’d never wanted a chicken, but a chicken was what I now had.
PART TWO: HENRIETTA SPEAKS
I am very busy! I scratch and peck. I love red worms from the compost, peanuts, cheese and following the woman around the garden and digging up anything she’s planted.
I spend a lot of time with the cat. He’s grumpy sometimes.
We lay around a lot.
And we eat cheese together!
When I molt it makes me miserable, and I just want to stay in bed. It’s hard work making new feathers! It’s also a lot of work to make eggs, which I do sometimes.
I don’t like being picked up, but the woman tells me that’s tough. But I can usually read her mind and I have eyes in the back of my head. When I see her coming with that look in her eye, I take off. It’s fun to make her run after me! We zig and zag around the yard, and I dash under shrubs. She rarely wins the chase.
I make lots of sounds. I can crow, say thank you, yum yum, ask questions, croon and sing to myself.
One day I made my raccoon-is-chasing-me! screaming noise, and the woman ran out of the house in time to see the big bruiser who was after me and scare him off. I stopped dead, and started to peck at the soil, and she laughed and called me a bird brain, but I’m not stupid–I’m pretty canny. I live in the present, and once the danger was gone, it was gone.
Last winter I was attacked by a red hawk. It almost got me, and I left a lot of feathers next to the house. I hid under the camellia, next to my sleeping place. The woman watched me and worried. She wondered if she should take me to a vet, because I was scared for two weeks. She said I had something called trauma. And then, suddenly I was better. Life is good.
PART THREE
But everything likes to eat chickens. Months later, a cat attacked her and then, one cold November day, we returned home to find a dog in the yard and Henrietta wedged between the winter jasmine and the wall of the garage, the best she could do to protect herself.
She couldn’t walk and David said it would have been better if the dog had just killed her. I took her inside, and put her in the cat carrier. Again, I wondered if she was suffering. How do you tell if a chicken feels pain?
After she survived two days I decided she deserved professional help, and drove far north to a chicken vet, the delightfully named Dr. Robin Eggenberger, who pronounced her leg broken. Robin laid out the two choices vets offer these days: spend thousands of dollars for surgery she may not survive, or euthanasia.
Henrietta was on the examination table, almost at my eye level. I asked her out loud what she wanted me to do. Her eye was bright, and her manner attentive. She didn’t answer, exactly, but I understood very clearly that she wasn’t ready to die yet. I told Robin I was going to give her a chance to heal herself, so she sent us home with medicine, and pain killers.
She stayed in a large open cardboard box in a corner of the kitchen and adapted to life indoors, where she’d really always wanted to live anyway. Because the lights were on, she’d stay up late, and became a bit of a night owl, like me. She’d get up at midnight and have a snack, definitely un-chicken-like behavior.
We went back to Robin, who was surprised Henrietta was still alive, and thriving. On our third visit I got the #1 chicken lady award, because of my care and Henrietta’s great recovery.
After two months she no longer needed to stay inside all day, and I left her outside longer and longer. Soon she would be able to return to her outdoor life.
And then, early on a Sunday morning, I heard her make a strange noise, one I’d never heard before. I went outside and called her, but didn’t hear her echoing cluck. I found a mass of white feathers in the same place the hawk had attacked her. That’s it, I thought. Whoever had attacked her had taken her clean away and she was done for.
Later that afternoon I searched some more and found Henrietta under the front deck. A raccoon had killed her, the same one that I’d seen twice the day before.
I gathered her up and took her to the backyard, and surrounded her with all her favorite foods, flowers, and the last egg she’d laid, and burned a candle. I drummed her leave-taking ceremony and drummed around the yard, the garage, and into the house, drumming in all the places she liked to scratch and peck, and I remembered all the ways she had amused me.
I could not part with her all at once, so I put her in her cardboard box and let her stay the night in the laundry room.
The next afternoon I dug a hole in one of her favorite places, next to the house, where she liked to stand on the patio edge and stare into the house, to see what was going on.
I placed her ravaged body on a piece of shocking pink silk, leftover from a sewing project. She was a larger-than-life chicken, and she deserved the best fabric.
Ink came downstairs, stood on the silk and sniffed her. I had shown her to him the night before, but this time he came on his own. What did he feel, I wondered?
I wrapped her carefully and placed her in the hole, and scattered her favorite food around her, then laid her last egg on top of her. I lit a candle and placed it upon her, and then just left her for an hour, with the candle burning, left her to feel her way into her new home, forever looking into the kitchen window at me, and me back at her.
I beat the drum for her. I shed a lot of bone-wracking tears. I drummed some more.
At dusk, with snow falling, the time she would have been coming to the door and asking to be let in, I covered her over. I hoped the Great Chicken Goddess would accept this feisty little bird with open arms.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, best little chicken there ever was.
EPILOGUE
I was surprised by my grief over my little chicken, which made me feel either very dull, or like shards of glass were piercing me all over, or alternately, like something long and ropey was slowly being pulled out of me. The pain was sharp and tearing. I heard the questioning murmur she often made, and I’d see her from the corner of my eye, scratching in her favorite place, or sitting side by side with Ink on the doormat. My tears were copious and came in waves. If I could liken it to anything, it must be similar to the withdrawal from an addiction; this is what happens when you need the next shot, the next hit, and you can’t get it. Your body goes into convulsions, your mind obsesses about the finality of the situation. Grief howls like a wind through your head.
And then, like the chicken herself, who very much lived in the present, the pain would subside and I could go about my business, as though nothing had happened. I know the territory of grief is something I just have to endure, and it will eventually pass. We have all known this place, many times. It’s familiar territory, but not one any of us would volunteer to travel through, because it’s a harsh and dusty place, with no shade, and no life.
And now, a month later, I realize this is a story about suffering, yes, but more than that it is about love and joy. To love and be loved, whether it’s for and by a two-legged, a four-legged or a no-legged, is surely why we are here. To have been chosen by another life form is an honor, and this little chicken chose me. I loved her. She was a great being.
Forever looking into the kitchen window at me, and me looking back at her
© R.S. Lyons 2017
— Ruth Shizuka Lyons, CC
This article was written for a class called The Human-Animal Connection, at Fairhaven College, and was the written part of a video presentation.
