Chickens

At the time, I couldn’t imagine the man he would become, much less the notion of him as a man.  My brother Steve was only 14 years old, but my father was raising him to be a capable, self-reliant man in the most old-fashioned sense of the word.  In fact, I can’t imagine my teenaged son doing a lot of the things we did back in the day.  We lived on a five acre chunk of land on the highest point in Hillsborough County.  In fact, it was named for my great grandfather, Henry Pugh Kennedy.  The local folks referred to it as "Kennedy Hill."  And that was where we lived with a small assortment of livestock…and chickens.  The chickens were as near-cherished as my Dad 
could muster in an emotion for farm animals.  Most days they laid their eggs and happily chirped and pecked the days away on our sunny Florida small farm.

When Dad’s chickens began to disappear, we were worried.  One by one, we'd find the remnants of a former loved hen when morning came. There was a fox that was stealing the hens, a true master of stealth.  And after an entire week of waking up to feathers strewn untidily all over the back yard and around the pool deck, I decided that this fox must have had  a death wish because our Dad, Papa Pierre, was getting ready to pull out the stops.  He had tried to fox-proof the hen house with no luck.  He double-locked it, wired the roof shut, then he triple locked it.  The recalcitrant fox continued to prevail.  The hens were nervous.  They stopped laying eggs.  And when evening came, there was always hopeful discussion at the dinner table of the new tactical improvements to the chicken house.  No, the fox would not win tonight.  No, he wouldn’t.  

Inevitably though, we would awaken to beaks and feathers and assorted gross-looking discarded body parts. Worse, the fox had the temerity to drag all that mess across our pool deck.  The consensus was a mixed “ewwh” from all of us kids and downright shocked outrage from Papa Pierre.  Now, he would resort to his “big gun,” my 14 year old younger brother Steve.

“Boy,” he said the next night after dinner.  “I want you to find a big ball of string.”

“Yeah, Dad?” said Steve.

“And then, I want you to take it with you when you go to bed tonight and tie it around your big toe.” 

Now, my brother Steve was truly the model kid.  He made good grades.  He was an athlete.  And unlike his big-mouthed big sister, known occasionally for her stubbornness, he was unfailingly respectful.  But as soon as the words “big toe” passed out of our father’s mouth, he began to look suspect…and also a little perturbed.  

“Aw, Dad.  How come?  I just wanna go to bed.”

“Listen here.  I’m gonna tie a dead hen at the other end of that string and leave it out by the hen house.  Now when you feel it pull on your toe, just get up and shoot that fox with the 12 gauge.  I am going to get that fox or bobcat or whatever it is that is stealing my hens." 

“No, Dad.  I think I am going to be doing that,” my brother said.

And that was the end of the conversation.  My brother Steve was on the hook for getting that chicken-stealing fox.  I felt bad.  I was often a little jealous of some of the fun stuff my Dad did with my younger brothers: target shooting, driving the riding mower, building stuff…but at that moment, well, I was really glad to be a girl. 

That night we all went to bed in our usual way.  That is, except for my brother Steve, who had gone to bed early in anticipation of the fox watch.  He was sleeping the heavy sleep that falls on a teenager with a very long string attached to his big toe.  The 12 guage shot gun sat, oblingly, nearby with the safety clicked to the “on” position in case duty called.  The string, went off the top bunk bed over our the bottom bunk bed and over our sleeping kid brother Eric.  It passed out beside the closet and out the bedroom door.  It went through the living room, out the back double glass doors and through the backyard to the pasture where the chicken house was located and, accordingly, was attached to one very dead hen. 

It’s almost 40 years later and now I can’t remember if I heard the gun go off that night, but on my recent Christmas visit home I was reminded again of those chicken days back in the 70’s.   All these years that have passed, all forty of them, Dad has always had some chickens pecking around the place.  And among these we've had some famous ones in the family lore.  There was "Peep-Peep," and "Henrietta" and there was even a scraggly little rooster named "Mister Kennedy" accompanied by another even dinkier rooster named "Fancy-boy." We sure have had our chickens.

This past Christmas, Mom and I walked outside after dinner to discover red feathers scattered about the woods near the house on the family compound.  Papa, by that time, was in his comfy reclining chair taking a post-Christmas dinner nap.  I wondered how many times over the last forty years Papa had lost chickens just that way, still always fighting the good fight trying to keep them safe.  I shook my head a little realizing how much things were the same…in that way at least.  Here we were, all of us grown now, with children and even grandchildren, but the chicken saga continued.  The sameness of that small thing struck a chord with me.

My brother Steve wasn’t nearby at just that moment that Mom and I walked outside.  He'd taken the grand babies to his house to nap, but I knew: if I walked myself on over to his house around the corner and handed him a ball of string and a shotgun, he’d know just what it meant.  He’d probably have a good chuckle about it too.

Joie and "Peep-Peep..."