A Funny Thing Happened

It crowed.

That was the beginning.

Lucky D. Clucky was supposed to be a she. Soft-spoken. Egg-laying. Hen-like in all the traditional ways.

But Lucky crowed. And kept crowing.

So. Not a hen.

Ah well. It was never really about the eggs. And definitely not about the meat—I’m not the killing type. No, this was always about communion. About sharing space with the endlessly strange and varied citizens of the animal kingdom.

But Lucky has had a rough go of it lately.

I started with four chickens, raised from chicks right there in my living room. A tight little crew. I gave one away—contractual obligation—and the remaining three seemed to be getting along just fine.

Then the fire came.

We were evacuated. The neighborhoods turned ghost-quiet. And in that stillness, the predators emerged. With no one home to lock the chickens in at night, two of them didn’t make it.

Sacrificed to the hunger of the wild.

That part still stings.

Somehow, Lucky survived. Shaken, but alive. I heard him one night a few weeks back—distressed, clearly not okay—and I brought him inside. Just like that, he was back in the living room.

He now enters through the window, like some eccentric boarder in a folktale. At first I had to train him. Now there are stairs.

In at dusk. Out in the morning. Rinse, repeat.

He seems okay. I don’t know if he gets lonely. Hard to say with chickens. But he seems content enough. He gets along with the dog, the cat, the rabbit. Especially the rabbit. They nap near each other sometimes, which feels like some small quiet victory.