For chicken happiness, it’s all about food

RYAN REYONOLDS

November 13, 2008 at 11:54AM AKST

The night is cool and dark. A wind was lost that once held promise: A lonesome breeze that found its way — a gift from thundering skies far south — through currents pulsing warmth into the icing shadows fading north. The land is still. Its breath gone quiet. And for a moment, nothing stirs.

And yet, just then, a scaled and sharpened toe thrusts forth, raking free the fallen leaves, with eyes above that search in vain. Hunger drives the brain behind this eager, searching, twiggy toe, and the stomach cries unto its mind unceasing.

“Find a bug. Find a bug. Find a worm. Find a bug.”

But the night is cold, the food deep sleeping, and the chicken, oh so very hungry.
So on it searches, scavenging further, far from the safety of the coop’s red warmth and fine fowl friends, until at last its keen eyes catch the scurrying passage of some tidbit bold and wandering.

“Bug!  Bug!” cries the brain. Rasp and tassle go the feet, as the chicken lunges, pecks and misses. Quick runs the bug, yet quicker still the hungry hen. The chase is on, one gizzard’s growling, and with a desperate lunge the chicken tries to end it all.

The void is what it catches. 

Down tumbles the chicken, over bank and onto pavement. Breathless, discombobulated, cold and angry, left unsated. With a thrust of wing it rights itself, stands its ground and looks about. 

“Bug?” thinks the chicken. 

“Bug!”, answers the night, feet clicking, and a neck is stretched, a beak closed not quite, and a feast at last is found. Now the gizzard’s quiet, the chicken dreaming and then the earth begins to hum.

Louder grows the single tone in rising pitch and coming on, toward the lone chicken whose hunger lies still. Its beak begins to rattle, a wind to blow and still it stands quiet, enjoying its fill. With eyes closed fast and one leg tucked up, it takes no notice of the false rising dawn, the increasing roar threatening to swallow it up.

The chicken is dozing when lights crest the hill, and the warmth of those lights, the unending drone, the contentment it feels remind the chicken of home. On come the lights. Still stands the chicken. Until at last, with white wings outstretched, it cranes up its neck. It reaches the sun.            

It didn’t have to end this way. In fact, it’s an awful shame. If only the owners of that poor, hungry hen had read Minnie Rose Lovgreen’s “Recipe for Raising Chickens,” then undoubtedly they would have known that “the main thing is to keep them happy.”   Hungry chickens aren’t happy chickens, and happy chickens certainly don’t go crossing roads willy-nilly in the dead of night.

Protect your flock and mind your socks. And please for the sake of the look of your grill and the number of chickens so dreadfully killed, keep ‘em happy at home so there’s no need to roam, and baskets a’ plenty will all your eggs fill. 

Cluck cluck.

Ryan Reynolds can be found at the library smelling old books and sometimes wearing argyle socks.  He can be reached at 224-4082 or rreynolds@cityofseward.net

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