Lucky

     I lost one of my chickens today, and I'm very sad about that.  Lucky wasn't just any chicken; she was--well, Lucky.  And she was lucky.  She'd lived through some pretty feather-raising experiences.
     Lucky was an Old English bantam, and a perfectly beautiful specimen of the breed, with her golden speckled feathers.  She was a tiny little thing, and she laid the smallest white eggs I've ever seen come from a chicken.  I acquired Lucky from a friend about 5 years ago, when I first moved to Redding.  Lorene had mail-ordered and hatched some eggs in an incubator, so her kids could see baby chicks come into the world.  Then she needed to find them a home, and I was happy to have them.  My husband, Dan, built them a nice pen out of some old dog kennel fencing, and he bought them a lovely wooden hen house.
     The pen stood just outside our fenced back yard, where our 3 large dogs spent a lot of their time.  There were six or eight chickens, and I went out and got some guinea hens to add to the flock.  They were all chicks together and got along well.  Occasionally we'd let them out to spread their wings, and I taught them to come when called by offering dove and quail seed and calling out, "Guinea, guinea, guinea!"  (I'd heard of teaching guinea hens to come when called and didn't realize the chickens would learn, too.)  Once or twice a chicken got into the back yard and the dogs killed them.  One day Lucky got in and lost all her tail feathers in the mouth of our Lab, but managed to escape.  That's when we named her Lucky.
     We'd had the chickens for almost two years when we had a terrible storm one winter night; I heard later that winds had been clocked at the airport near our home at upwards of 80 miles an hour.  In the middle of the night, the wind sounded like a freight train going by outside my bedroom window, and through the din I heard a loud crash.  I ran outside to see what made the noise, fearing the worse for my horses, chickens and goats, but as I rounded the house the wind lifted me bodily and threw me against the chain link fence, knocking my own wind right out of me.  I went back inside and decided I'd just have to wait for daylight.
     The next morning I found my chicken pen and henhouse had been lifted and thrown right over the 5-foot back yard fence, and broken into pieces.  Although there were no dead chickens in the yard, there were several missing when we finally found the survivors pecking around in the front yard bushes a little later, acting as if nothing had ever happened.  Lucky, once again, was one of the survivors.  Days went by before we could erect a new pen, and in that time we lost every single chicken and guinea hen except for--you guessed it--Lucky.  She spent every day right next to the house, outside the kitchen window, and roosted there at night, ten feet up in the branches of a pine tree.
     That was three years ago.  In the meantime, we've increased our flock to twenty-one hens.  Since everyone but Lucky is a full-sized chicken, not a bantam, she unfortunately was at the tail-end of the infamous pecking order, and was constantly and viciously chased away from food a good deal of the time.  She alone, however, would eat out of my hand, so at least once a day I would go down to where the new chicken pen stands near the horse barn and hand-feed her.  Sometimes the other hens, although they were too chicken to actually eat from my hand, would crowd in close and intimidate her into running off.  I got into the habit of quietly trying to draw her away when they weren't looking.  I could literally peek around the side of the barn and whisper, "Guinea, guinea, guinea," and she alone would hear me and come waddling around the corner to eat from my hand.
     Dan had just sat down to a dinner of warmed-over ham and noodle casserole tonight, and I was in the laundry room folding a load of clean clothes, when I heard a chicken squawk, not even sounding hurt so much as surprised.
     "The dogs have a chicken!"  I screeched, running for the back door.
     Dan beat me there, and I watched through the sliding glass doors as he called off the dogs and scooped the little mass of feathers into his hands.
     "It's Lucky," I moaned.
     He took one quick look, and when he lifted his eyes I saw what he didn't want to have to tell me.
     I decided to bury her out at the back of the property, where we had to bury two of our little goats, Jar-Jar and Binks, last year.  Digging graves is no easy feat in Redding soil, but "Lucky"-ly it was only a chicken grave and we've had record rainfall for the last month, so the ground is relatively soft, as in a great big pick can make a decent dent if you're very persistent.  (I've never buried a chicken before, and I doubt I ever will again, but Lucky wasn't just any chicken.)  My granddaughter, Kaela, came down to help me out (she really is grand).  The funeral was well-attended by several friendly cows, who stood just outside the fence and mooed forlornly to excellent effect, as the sun sank sadly into the west.  We piled lucky thirteen very large stones on top of the grave, and placed white stones all around the edges.
     Lucky had a very good life, and a pretty long one, for a chicken.  I tell myself she went quickly and didn't suffer, because the last sound I heard her make was more surprised than anything.  If my mom is in Heaven watching, as I'm sure she is, she's probably already taken Lucky under her wing and is up there feeding her from her hand while Jar-Jar and Binks frolic nearby.