Spring, 2021.
We were all making sourdough bread.
Teaching ourselves algorithms to solve Rubik’s Cube.
Binging Bridgerton, Schitt’s Creek, Normal People.
Waiting for the next episode of Mare of Easttown or The Handmaid’s Tale to drop.
Eating pastries for breakfast, fries for lunch, Miss Vickies for dinner.
Pouring the first glass at noon because we deserved it. Pouring the second glass when the first glass was finished because why not?
Okay, I know we weren’t all doing these things.
Some of us hiked. Some of us read.
Some of us worked more. Some of us worked out more.
Some of us journaled, quilted, Sudokued.
Some of us built a deck and matching cornhole boards.
Some of us built a chicken coop.
My family and I built a chicken coop.
It was a whole thing. My wife had the idea, my sister and brother-in-law had the playhouse, my nieces who were past the playhouse playing age gave their thumbs-up blessing to convert the playhouse to a coop, my live-in father-in-law had all the chicken-raising experience and know-how, my kids had the excitement, and I had the time and the tools.
When the whole thing was finally constructed and secure we went out and bought ten pullets (teenaged chickens).
In a cage we built especially for the trip, nine of our new flock rode home in the box of the truck, clucking nervously away to each other: Hey! What the hell’s going on? Nobody asked us about relocating!
My excited kids were already naming them: Elvis, Seinfeld, Jesus, Hawk, Steve (from Stranger Things), Gilgamesh, Adrian, Liquorice, Truffle.
The tenth—a little round fluff ball of grey, downy feathers, eyes mostly hidden by her feathery gold-and-grey Afro, our silkie chicken—rode home in the front seat in my wife’s lap.
The six humans were quiet.
Quietly giddy about our imminent (albeit modest) foray into contemporary homesteading.
All cooped up together, comfortable in the cab of the truck, barrelling homeward.
Everyone softly smiling
And from somewhere within all that fluff of the little grey silkie’s head came the tiniest little voice.
A chip not yet a chirp.
She seemed to be listening to the radio. Trying to sing along.
One song faded, another began.
The upbeat drumbeat opening of I Wanna Dance With Somebody.
Her little grey beak opened and closed with the first sung notes.
In perfect beak-sinking unison with the singer herself.
Ahh.
Yeah.
Woooooh.
My wife noticed and nudged me. I stole a glance and confirmed it. We smiled.
A galline prodigy was born.
And the tenth bird found her name: Whitney.
Or Whit, as we’ve come to call her now, who continues to this day, more than five years on—despite all the odds, all the trials & near tragedies—to command her space in this world and (to borrow from Hamlet) to defy augury.