I have few really sharp memories of my younger years. And by "sharp memories," I mean things I can actually see in my mind, and not just concepts I hardly recall. One of those sharp memories is digging little rivers in the sand by our pasture pond and taking a bucket of water and dumping it at the top of these rivers so I could watch the water go down. That was my Playstation. Pond sand.
Another sharp memory also involves the pond, but wasn't as carefree as digging in the sand. A friend of ours (whose name escapes me) who wasn't quite a strong swimmer ventured too deep into the pond and started drowning. I remember telling the other kids with me not to go in, because a drowning person is more likely just to pull you under and cause you to drown too, and I ran to the house and screamed for my dad. He came out to the pond and rescued the drowning boy, who lived but never went near our pond again.
The sharp memory that is relevant to this childhood tale is standing in the driveway, balancing two chicks on either shoulder. I don't remember where we got these chicks and I don't remember where I went after this particular memory, but I remember standing in our driveway with a baby chicken on each shoulder like a retarded pirate, and I declared that the baby hen would be named Raspberry, and the baby rooster would be named Clucky.
Well Clucky and Raspberry grew from chicks into chickens, and then they started shackin' up. There was a giant bamboo stand near our barn, and they took up residence within this bamboo stand and made more baby chickens.
When these baby chickens grew up, I learned how to perform a neat trick with them. I don't know who I learned it from, but whoever it was, thank you for hours of entertainment. Chickens are dumb creatures. If you get their attention with a stick, they'll stare at it for as long as you'll let them. And if you draw a line in the dirt with that stick veerryyyy slooowwwllyyy and then take the stick away, they will stare at the line in the dirt until they're physically disturbed. I called it "hypnotizing the chickens." I'd spend an afternoon luring chickens to our dirt driveway with chicken feed, and then I'd hypnotize them all. When someone arrived at our house, they would be met with a horde of stock-still chickens that wouldn't move for their car.
You can look up "hypnotizing a chicken" on YouTube and you'll find a ton of videos of people hypnotizing chickens. There are at least three ways different from my way. Apparently, chickens can be hypnotized by basically anyone doing anything.
For the record, don't try that trick with geese. They aren't as dumb as chickens, and are much meaner.
OK, so like I said, the bamboo stand that doubled as the House of Chicken Love was located near our barn. You had to walk past this bamboo stand in order to get from the house to the barn and vice versa. Whenever my mom (or anyone for that matter) walked past the bamboo stand, Clucky would burst forth and attack, jumping and slashing with his spurs, protecting his lady love and their babies.
A = rooster's leg.
B = rooster's spur.
The spur is nasty and can do a lot of damage. Clucky wielded his with the practiced precision of a surgeon and the unbridled rage of a berserker. My mom eventually would take a stick or a bat or a broom with her when she went to the barn, and she'd slap him away with her weapon while she made a mad dash for the barn door. Once inside, you were safe.
Clucky attacked anyone. My little sister Harper had many a Clucky battle wound on her back, and even I was not spared the rage of Clucky.
Now, around the time that Clucky's grip of terror was tightening around our farm, my grandmother came to live with us. She had lived in California up until this time, but had developed lung cancer and was feeling vulnerable in her time of need. My dad said she should come live with us so she wouldn't be alone during her recovery, and she agreed.
Some background on my Grandma Rosie (my dad's mom): she was born and raised in Wyoming with 11 brothers and sisters (I think 11, might be 12, not sure, never met them all). According to my mom, her family was in the logging business. I don't know how much I believe that, because I've been to Wyoming and there are no trees. Never mind... maybe I do believe that. Maybe my paternal forefathers were such awesome loggers they rendered the former lush forests of Wyoming into the bare frozen seagull-infested prairies that they are today.
Yes, there are seagulls in Wyoming. Not joking. I have no idea why.
Anyway, the stories I heard about my grandma when I was a kid led me to believe she was some kind of badass Little House on the Prairie type person, only not obnoxious and lame. She knew how to quilt and sew and crochet (and probably knit and also resurrect the dead), she was a crazy-awesome gardener with a majorly green thumb, and she was a great cook. And unlike my other grandmother, she didn't yell at me in German and give me "the Knuckle" when I was bad.
When Grandma Rosie came to live with us, she developed a dislike of Clucky on day one. She determined that something needed to be done about our Attack Rooster.
One day, Harper and I came home from school and we were met with a big pot of homemade chicken soup.
YES.
SHE.
DID.
We were served up big bowls of it and we dug in, exclaiming that it was very yummy soup, indeed. My parents looked on in silent horror as we ate our bowls of Clucky soup, and my grandma leaned in and said, "That soup is made out of Clucky."
I was upset.
And I wouldn't eat chicken for a while.
With Clucky gone, Raspberry and the baby chickens had no one to protect them from wild predators, so they were soon gone. That was sad, but the sadness of having no more chickens to hypnotize was overshadowed by the absence of our feathered nemesis.
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