GIRL AND CHICKEN

Before we go any further down this road, it would probably serve the process to begin with some background of my beginning years, way back in the last century.  I've read somewhere that the formative years are those before the age of seven.  The die is cast, and the rest will follow whatever path has been mapped out by things that happen in those first critical seven years.  Here's a picture of me six years into the process.

“Girl And Chicken” … a mid-twentieth century early black-and-white photograph, circa. 1948, probably taken with a commonly used “Brownie”.  Cost a buck-ninety eight, film was what, 35 cents or something … 

Anyway, here I am with my first pet … a rooster, one of those Woolworth’s Easter peeps that refused to die.  He was tame, I kid you not.  He knew his name, which is way more than I am prepared to say about his owner at that same time.  Can you imagine?  A CHICKEN???  His name was Wacky.  Don’t ask.  He used to ride on the handlebars of my bicycle.  There we'd go, up and down the sidewalk on my street.  He never even pooped on me, unlike a number of seagulls I have known over the years.  Which are, come to think of it, not unlike a lot of the men I’ve known.  But I digress.  Another story for another time.

A chicken.  Jeezuz.  What kind of a mother gets her kid a chicken??  I mean, a hamster, goldfish, even a rabbit … but a CHICKEN?  I was fucked from the get-go.

Okay, so I got this chicken.  He was dyed pink, which means someone really screwed up, but whatever, I don’t think his sexuality was threatened in the least, considering he crowed like a sonofabitch every morning between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m.  See, my Grandpa, who was a farmer at heart, built him a wonderful chicken cage right beside our house in the side yard.  Wacky grew up into a big honking white leghorn, and became the neighborhood nuisance.  I believe someone blew the whistle on poor Wacky.

I came home from school one fateful day, only to discover that my beloved pet had been taken “out in the country, to a farm, where he’ll be happy.”  Uh-huh.  Okey-dokey.  And we’re having WHAT for dinner??  Don’t think so, check, please. 

So:  Upon careful consideration of the facts as set forth above, I’ve decided that this little episode on the bumpy road of life is exactly what is meant by the saying, “Bought the farm.”  Wacky went to a farm.  Nope.  Wacky bought the farm. 

Requiescat in pacem, Wacky.  You were a good chicken.