My Daddy Loved Everything Fowl

Yes, it’s true. Dad loved all birds. His favorites were chickens. When he was a little boy, chickens were his playmates. He was an only child and his family lived way out in the sticks where the hoot owls die of the blues. So, his chickens entertained him.

I remember we had a big chicken calendar (probably 2’ x 3’ or larger) on our wall that he had gotten from a hatchery. There were pictures of all variety of chickens. Some were domestic and some were exotic. Over the years, I think he must have had a plan to collect one of each kind.

I can remember when he and my brother fixed up some pens for his assortment on the river place. He had regular pigeons, powder (pouter) puff pigeons, fan tail pigeons, pheasants, doves, peacocks, ducks, geese, guineas, quails, turkeys, and several species of chickens: Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, Brahmas, Wyandotte, Leghorns, Bantams (known to us as banties), Domineckers, Silkies, Fighting Games, and Naked Necks, to name a few. Some had feathered legs, top knots, beards, crowns, and other had spurs. It was an amusing mix.

Whenever he gathered the eggs, it looked almost like an Easter basket. The eggs were white, brown, green, and beige. We were not allowed to touch them. He sorted through them and kept most to hatch out, but he also gave some to Mom to cook with.

We used to laugh and say that Dad loved his chickens more than he did his kids. He was very, very fussy about the birds. They were fed special feed and he checked them every day. The same cannot be said for his kids.

He would raise chickens for us to eat. I always hated the days when we had to dress the chickens at the big house. Dad, Mom, and the boys would wring their necks and they would flop all over the yard. They would make me pick one up by the feet and hold it upside down so that they could skin it. I won’t go into all of the gross details here, but suffice it to say that I was completely disgusted with my job.

In the lean years, we’d eat chicken for just about every meal (or at least it seemed like it). To this day, one brother and my mom can hardly stomach chicken. I remember the year that we had a bumper crop of potatoes. I was in third grade. From my grammar school photos, you can see the change in my face from one year to the next because we had fried chicken and mashed potatoes almost every day. Plump was an understatement.

There was the time that the boys had friends over to spend the night. I knew that they were up to something because of all the giggling they were doing. They had found some of Whitey and Ma’s moonshine up the road under a rock. Although they wanted to try it, none were brave enough. So, they got the idea to soak it in a piece of bread and feed it to one of Dad’s roosters.

That old rooster ran off all the hens and began to peck the saturated bread all by himself. He’d peck and peck and then raise his head and look around. He repeated this until all the bread was gone.

He stumbled from the yard to the top of our cellar. That rooster was drunk. He tried to crow and all he could manage was “Rrr……rrr….rr…r..eerrr”. It was a pitiful sound. He’d try to flap his wings, but they wouldn’t obey. His wings simply slapped instead of flapping.

Before too long, that rooster was dead. Oops! We knew that trouble lay ahead. The boys were embarrassed because they knew the ruckus that Dad would raise and that their friends would witness it.

Where we lived, we could hear Dad coming home about a mile away. He drove like a bat out of Hades and we’d hear the old car rattling up and down the hills hitting every bump and rock in the road. We heard the motor and then the rattling getting closer and closer. They panicked. What were they going to tell Dad happened to his rooster? So, they picked him up and quickly ran to the barn and threw him in.

Because we had lots of chickens, Dad didn’t miss that rooster at first. The boys stayed mum. Of course, I didn’t breathe a word either.

The next day, Dad found the dead rooster. He wondered what had happened to him since he didn’t have a mark on him. No animal had killed him. He was a young rooster. What could have caused his premature demise?

Not one of us kids speculated. We just kept our lips zipped.

It was Dad’s custom to dispose of the dead chickens by putting their limp (or crisp) bodies on the fender of the car or pickup and whizzing down the road really fast. When he got to just the right spot where he wanted to ditch the chicken, he’d slam on the brakes and the corpse would go flying off.

It wasn’t until Dad was on his death bed that my brothers finally confessed as to what had happened to that rooster. Dad forgave them, but I was surprised.