The Chicken Story

A slightly fictionalized but mostly true story

Ever chased chickens in your pajamas?

            I hadn’t, and I never thought I would, until the day new neighbors moved into the rental house next door.

            But let me set the scene for you first. To begin with, we’re homeschoolers. When you’re not leaving the house to go to school, why bother to change out of your pajamas? We wore them day in and day out – though after the chicken debacle we adjusted our habits accordingly to avoid future embarrassment.

            It also needs mentioning that the rental house next door was often vacant. Plenty of neighbors had come and gone, and currently, one had just started to move in. He did not live there yet… but his twenty chickens did. Since then, the number has grown to thirty-plus, more than twice the limit and complete with four roosters, but since this neighbor is one of the best we’ve had in a while, we let it slide.

            Now, it was bright and early one morning and we were all settling down to work in various spots around the house. It so happened that my younger sister had chosen to study by the front window, while my mother and I were in the office.

            “Mom, there’s chickens outside,” my sister called.

            It was morning, and besides, they’d only moved in yesterday. None of us, that early in the day, had remembered the fact that we now lived next to chickens.

            “No there aren’t. They’re probably just some big birds,” my mother hollered back.

            “No, there’s chickens,” my sister repeated. At that point, we were realizing that she was sufficiently capable of recognizing chickens when she saw them, so we all stampeded to the front window, bringing with us the few-week-old kitten we had just got, still so small that it had to be monitored at all times lest it be squished underfoot.

            Well, sure enough, chickens were scattered across the cul-de-sac as far as the eye could see. There was something we had neglected to tell the new neighbors – the latch for the gate in their fence was broken, and here it had just blown open, letting the pack of chickens run free.

            The moment we saw the chickens, chaos broke out. My mother gave orders; we scattered. My little brother raced downstairs where my father was working from home, this being during the Covid mess. My father was in the middle of some project or another, minding his own business, when in burst my brother, dumping a traumatized kitten on him and then vanishing.

            Meanwhile, the rest of us scrambled to put on the nearest articles of footwear to be found and burst out the front door to try and catch the chickens.

            Let me tell you, herding chickens is perhaps even more impossible than herding cats. They’re slow, and boy are they stubborn.

            We tried several different techniques. While my mother held the gate open, we children spread out to try and hem the chickens in, but we were severely outnumbered and soon the ranks were broken. We chased them; it resulted in a short little burst of speed and a lot of flapping, but the chicken would almost immediately stop again and peck around in the neighbors’ yards.

            I do wonder if anyone happened to see us on their doorbell camera. It would have brought some humor into their morning for sure. Our reputation as that slightly weird homeschool family would also probably have been further embellished.

            Finally, I had what I thought to be a brainwave. At my feet was a massive white chicken, but I was reasonably confident that it was mostly feathers. Our neighbor had a thing for exotic varieties. Yes, there are exotic chickens. Some have absolutely no feathers on their heads whatsoever, and others have feathers that look like an afro. I kid you not.

            I eyed the chicken. I could just pick the thing up and cart it back into the backyard, right? It would be a lot easier and way more direct than chasing the thing. I bent and slid my hands under, then lifted.

            I had been prepared for a normal-sized chicken with an overabundance of feathers. But oh no. That thing was entirely chicken.  I had not been ready for this. It had to weigh at least thirty pounds. Off-balance and startled, I managed to heft the thing, but at this point, I had lost my chance to grab it and go with no trouble. It was flapping and squawking, and I stumbled toward the gate with it as fast as I could, eager to get this over with.

            Lugging the chicken up to the gate, I executed a maneuver that later came to be described by my family as a ‘granny-shot.’ I flung the chicken into the backyard, while it squawked and flapped the whole time, its bulk rapidly describing a descending arc. Meanwhile, my mother held the gate and shook with laughter.

            Suffice it to say I did not try to pick up any of the rest of the chickens. There eventually was this one black chicken so fat it had to lay down to eat. I never overestimated the featheriness of those chickens again.

            Somehow, we eventually wrangled the rest of the chickens into the backyard. We then closed the gate and my mother mounted the fence, trying to reach over and jerry-rig the broken latch.

            And who should pull up at that moment but our baffled neighbor, wondering why we were on his fence in our pajamas.

            Well, eventually the matter was sorted out, and not three minutes after we had retreated back into the house, winded but laughing, did the doorbell ring. My mother went to answer it, and lo and behold, our new neighbor plunked a handful of warm, goopy eggs straight into her hands, ‘fresh from the –” you know what. My poor mother, being an introvert as it was, was further discomforted by the hot eggs thrust into her hands. She stood by while the neighbor thanked us, and when the conversation finally ended and she got the uncleaned eggs into a bowl, we children laughed all the harder.

            Now, that’s a story, you say. Never heard of the likes of that happening.

            It happened to us two more times. Same chickens, same neighbor, only the former were steadily multiplying.

            I missed out on the third time because I was stuck indoors with a broken leg, but I sure heard about it. On the second occasion, my mother was standing in the driveway with a chicken under each arm when the neighbor drove up. He had guests in his car that time, too.

            Yes, he drove up every time just as we were closing up the escapade.

            There was also the time wind blew lots of folks’ fences down in our neighborhood and a Husky got into the backyard with the chickens and my parents had to rush out to save the chickens from an untimely – and gruesome – fate.

            And every time we’ve saved those chickens, our reward is another batch of eggs. Fresh eggs. Real fresh.

            So yes, I have chased chickens in my pajamas twice, and it is something I hope to never do again. But should the occasion ever rise once more, I’ve learned a thing or two for sure. Never underestimate a chicken.