This is my story: I was born somewhere; I don’t know where. The first thing I remember was darkness, and the space I was in was too small. I kept hitting my head, and then finally the ceiling cracked, and I struggled out of a jagged hole into too much light. That was not much more than a year ago.
I have a good life. I mean, I can complain and believe me I do, but mostly I’m free to do what I like all day long. When the sun starts to go down, I hole up with my sisters and Rudy, the rooster, because in the back of my mind I’m always thinking about the bogeyman. In my nightmares, the bogeyman comes on silent wings, flings itself at me, and carries me away to its lair where it rips me to pieces and devours me. Humans call the bogeyman Hawk.
You see, when I was barely more than a chick, I got hawked. I was living in a big field near cows and sheep, with a hundred sisters. One day a great beast flew out of the sky and attacked me. I put up a huge fight and got away. The feathers on my head and neck never grew back, and for a long time, the humans who took care of me called me Scalphead. But I eventually healed and came to live where I do now, near the goat pen. The humans here call me Gladys.
Life is good, but the thing I can always complain about is food. Food, food, food – there can never be too much. I’m always looking for treasures under the leaves when my sisters and I go bugging. Scratch, scratch, scratch. There’s food everywhere! I don’t need humans, but when I see one coming from the big house, I run right over to it. Often it will toss us cracked corn or something else tasty. The best part about human food is you don’t have to work for it.
Sometimes I hear a loud purring sound, and then a big metal container appears in the yard, and out climbs one of my humans. As it walks up to the big house, I walk right in front of it, keeping my eyes on its hands. Somehow those hands produce food. Even though sometimes the human steps on my toes or trips on me, the important thing is to keep the eyes glued to the hands. They’re the key to the whole thing, and they will eventually produce food.
On sunny days, the humans bring food on plates out to the patio – the brick yard where my sisters and I like to loll in the sun. I used to wait for the humans to toss me some food from the plates, but I figured out that I could get it myself if I hopped up onto the arm of the chair. Humans make a big fuss when I do that.
When the humans are around, though, I don’t have to worry about the bogeyman. I can relax. I preen my feathers – which I need to close my eyes to do, since I stick my head right into them, and I don’t want dust in my eyes. Don’t get me wrong – I like dust; I bathe in dust. My sisters and I have lots of dust spas around the yard. Anywhere the dirt is dry, we lie down and scratch it up into our feathers. Ahhh, that feels so good on the skin, like being itched all over. Afterward, we shake our feathers and a cloud of dust flies up. It helps with the mites, you know, and I believe it has a beneficial effect on our complexions.
As for egg laying – we’re famous for that. We lay them, but then they disappear. I’ve seen the humans take them; I don’t know why. Sister Buffy once sat on her eggs in a hidden nest for a month. Every now and then she’d come off the nest, but she’d act pretty whacked out. She’d be all puffed up and spread her wings wide at Rudy and Dark Beak and me – as if we were the enemy. Her nest was right next to the cellar wall in some dead leaves the same color as her feathers. The humans couldn’t find the nest at first, even though I saw them looking there many times. Buffy never did manage to hatch any eggs before a human finally found the nest and took away the eggs. All that time, all those eggs – I don’t know why she bothered. I never stay longer than a minute or two when I lay one. I mean, the point of life is food, right?
I stick with my sisters most of the day. We like being together. After breakfast we might rest in the brush behind our house, or under the grapevines across the yard. We need lots of quiet time to digest food, and because we have finely tuned nervous systems. We have to move quickly to get a bug, and we always have to keep an eye out for the bogeyman, because it moves fast when it’s got one of us in its sights. Even if we just think we see the bogeyman, we run for cover like the devil is chasing us.
Rudy used to be our early warning system. He was smaller than me, but he was a macho kind of guy. I liked him because he always waited for us girls to eat first, and if he found an especially tasty worm, he’d call me over to get it – because I’m top chicken. Of course, later he expected favors in return. He wanted me to squat down while he jumped up on my back, dug his claws in, and did some kind of rooster thing. I didn’t pay much attention to him though, because he was about half my size.
Anyway, Rudy got hawked. We all ran into the woods when the bogeyman came, but Rudy stayed out making a racket to warn us and didn’t get to cover in time. Since then, I sometimes make rooster sounds when I see trouble. Being top chicken, I feel it’s my duty, now that Rudy is gone.
Recently, a bogeyman perched on a tree limb above the goat pen, and I raced to an overhanging nettle thicket and made a racket to warn my sisters to run for the bushes. The bogeyman didn’t move, but one of the humans came running outside. The human made its own loud cackle – which, of course, I intended to have happen – and the thing flew off. Humans can be useful. They’re good for food, and with patience, they can be trained. I’ve taught one to come outside with a treat just about anytime I look in the windows and catch its eye. I’m hoping to teach it to watch over us all day long to keep the bogeyman away.
