OK.
This one is called--
it's not here, it's not called anything.
Well, Yeah, OK.
I'll read you this one, this one called, 'The Chicks"
and it's about a couple of chickens.
It's small-- This is small prose essay,
and this one's as well a small prose essay.
"At first, the three chicks were little puffs
of yellow dandelion floating in our backyard squeaking
like rusty latches.
I followed after them in my big flapping tennis
shoes and an 11-year-old awkwardness,
happy, because there were newborn and breathing the April
air of blossom and hope.
They didn't seem to do much, these chicks, they
packed the sandy ground and flapped their tiny wings,
they blinked a lot to.
Scratch and went to sleep standing up.
When one started moving the others followed,
they traveled in threes with a quick neck bobbing jerks.
I thought it was cute that they liked to climb onto my shoes
until one shit on my tennis shoe and I had
to clean it off on the grass.
I kicked sand in the chick's face,
but immediately felt sorry for him
because he didn't stop blinking for the longest time.
[LAUGHTER]
By the third week, they were large and grayish yellow
with the start of red combs in the top of their heads.
I no longer fed them grain from my outstretched palm
or held up leaves of lettuce for them
to perforate with their beaks.
The mayonnaise lid was used for the water trough, which was
replaced with a plastic dish.
I no longer raced after them, Rick my older brother
said it was stupid for me to care about them, but I had to.
They had outgrown their cardboard pen
and I couldn't just leave them because the neighbor's cat had
sniffed them out.
With wire and some mismatched lumber,
I made a new pen for them and just in time,
the cat had attacked the chick which gave up a few feathers
and screams, but no blood, or so I thought.
The next day when I let them out to play,
the hurt chick seem dizzy and quiet, his blink was slow,
one wings seemed bent.
I patted its nub of comb and purred, what's wrong?
I went inside the house to do the dishes
and when I returned the neighbor's cat was
carrying the hurt chicken over the fence.
I threw a rock at the cat and cuss words.
I hated myself for leaving the chick alone.
I sat down on the ground with the two other chickens
continuing dropping their round chicken turds in the dust.
I stirred the ground with a stick
and felt a great hatred for the cat.
I didn't even have its body--
I didn't have even the body of a chick to bury
or a name to call it.
When they were a month old the chicks
now named Henrietta and Willy began to walk like chickens,
high stepping in the weeds and tomato plants.
They began to sound like chickens too,
clucking instead of squeaking.
The also shit more, it became nasty,
and when my younger brother Marty tried to play with them,
Henrietta peck pecked his belly button, which
was showing under his t-shirt, blood sprang skyward
and my brother, open mouth and shock, began to cry.
Fortunately, my mother wasn't home.
I washed his belly button and fit a flesh colored circle
Band-Aid on the wound.
[LAUGHTER]
I was scared because I thought that maybe his belly
button would rip open in his guts would flood out.
Then I would really be in trouble.
The chicks were now dusty white chickens,
although they were huge and scary,
the neighbor's cats still hungered for them.
I was still pained by the death of the first one.
I decided to get my revenge by hiding behind
a fort of cardboard while the two remaining chickens
scratched about the yard.
I waited with sweaty rocks in my hand.
Finally, the cat climbed onto the fence
jumped down and creeped toward Willie who just looked
up and blinked at the cat.
I rose quickly and threw a rock but missed.
I threw other rocks and missed, cussed,
and climbed the fence to shout at the cat which
disappeared behind car parts.
I shepherded the two remaining chickens
that had grown so huge and so wildly stupid
that they began to shit in the drinking water, and then drink.
I hit them with a mop, chased them,
and was angry because they were so unappreciative
of my concern for them.
I would stay with them for hours sweating
under the early summer Fresno sun.
I would spend my own pennies for a pinch of grain.
I would walk to Country Boy Market where shamefaced.
I asked the grocer for wilted lettuce.
Because I was careless, Willie was the next to get it.
Instead of carrying them over, the cat ripped into the chicken
in our vegetable garden.
His whiskers were bloody, his eyes narrow,
his jaw white with feathers.
I threw the mop at the cat and missed.
I claim climbed the fence and went looking for the kitty.
Cat calling, here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.
I turned to scoop Willie onto a shovel
and bury him in the corner of the yard.
Tears flooded my eyes, while I whittle
the cross Henrietta went back, went
about picking pecking grain and lettuce
unmoved by the passing of her friend Willie,
but Henrietta had her day.
I became less and less interested
in the preservation of my last chick,
that one time little puff of feathers.
I was playing dodge ball in the front yard when
I heard the chicken cry and raced
to find the cat dragging the fluttering
Henrietta across the yard.
When the cat saw me he let go and climbed the fence
in two leaps.
Henrietta was badly hurt, I tried to catch and comfort her
but she trotted about the yard trailing
loose feathers and blood.
Toward evening, Henrietta finally
quieted and allowed me to pick her
up, coo at her airless head, and place her in the pen.
The next morning she was very quiet when I let her out.
She walked with a limp, but mostly sat blinking.
She didn't eat or drink from her dish,
her beak seemed more open than closed, and for the first time
I saw that a chicken's tongue was stiff like a matchstick.
The following days she dragged herself
about on her good leg and a day later,
she couldn't flutter her wings.
My brother said we had to chop off her head.
I was scared and my brother was scared.
I picked up Henrietta and said I'm sorry and cuddled her
as I carried her to a 2 by 4 set on bricks.
I let her go at the last moment and told Rick
that I couldn't do it.
He couldn't do it either, and we sat on the grass
feeling awful as we heard-- as we listened to the chicken beat
about the yard.
When I turned around Henrietta was blinking her eyes at us.
Rick hit me hard in the arm and said it was my fault.
He rose quickly grabbed his shovel
and with three sloppy strikes and a lot of anger, Henrietta's
head came off in warm blood and feathers mingled
in the grassy weeds.
Rick threw down the shovel.
I started crying because it was now my job to bury her.
I scooped up her body on the shovel and her closed eyed head
and buried her next to Willie.
I didn't put a cross over her grave until the following day.
I pushed over the pen, flattening it
by jumping up and down on it.
For the rest of the summer the neighbor's
cat climbed onto the fence every day
to see if we had more chickens."