A Tale of Two Chickens

Friday morning we put two nice, big Dominiquer roosters in a period chicken crate and hauled 'em to Perryville in the back of the truck knowing they'd make a fine addition to supper on Saturday night. One we had purchased from the Amish down in Liberty as a chick. The other, we hatched from an egg, it had a pretty little rosebud comb.

When we got there, we decided to tie the roosters out on a picket line, to make their final hours a little happier. Danny promptly dropped one and it went squawking and flapping off toward the hay field. We all chased and penned and plotted to catch it. We set two fine teenage boys, Jake and Chris, to chasing it. They finally dropped a heavy wool blanket over its head and slowed it down enough that somebody could grab it up.

The chickens spent an uneventful afternoon pecking at whatever their hearts desired down at the bottom of the hill. You really didn't notice them much at all, unless you happened to be walking that way. Until, that is, until one of them got loose. And, people, the race was on. Both sides of the creek, and up through the field, that rooster zig-zagged all over creation. Now, little did we know, but we had a chicken chaser from way back in our midst. Old Joe-bo, he slipped up behind that chicken and grabbed it up like it wasn't nothin'. There was a cackle or two from old Mr. Gevedon declaring that Joe-bo had thieved a chicken or two in his day. And if Joe-bo hadn't been goin' to do the preachin' on Sunday mornin', we might have had some serious apprehensions on the moral character of that man.

That other rooster figured out how to get loose like the first one. And I'll be durned if we didn't get to watch the fun all over again. No matter how hard they tried, those other fellers, couldn't catch that chicken. And Joe-bo said, "well, I reckon I better help these boys out." Those chickens went back in the crate after that. We'd not be chasing chickens all day long.

Well, young mister Owen who is just about six years old, got there sometime after dark. He thought those chickens in a crate was about the best thing he'd ever seen. We had us a discussion, me and Owen. He thought that the stew pot was a fine place for two such chickens. He enjoyed that idea a great deal, let me tell you. He spent most of Saturday, telling everybody that came by. "We was going to eat the chickens."

Little did we know, that chickens is low-down mean and ugly spirited. Those damned old roosters crowed every little bit, ALL night long. When I give up and rolled out of bed, somebody had throwed a saddle pad over the crate trying to trick the roosters into going to sleep. Roosters is mean. Nobody had much love for chicken on Saturday mornin'.

Danny and Bryan took the roosters and skinned them clean and brought them back to the stew pot. When they was finished boilin', Beverly cleaned all the meat off those bones for the chicken supree we was havin' for supper. The bones she brought out of the kitchen, there was a person or two that wanted to have some words with those roosters. You just can't reason much with a live chicken, and if you're going to have words you'd just might as well have them with the old boiled-down bones. That chicken sure was good. Maybe it was the crowin' that made it taste better.