by J.K. Levine
All my friends want chickens.
They ask: have you heard about the bird flu? A hundred million chickens infected. They cull the sick. That’s why the price of eggs is so high.
And they appeal to reason: a chicken would pay for itself in this economy, and if we sold the eggs, maybe we could turn a profit. Rent is high even here in this depressing place.
And ethics: did you know that “cage-free” eggs are just a marketing trick? There are plenty of ways to confine without cages.
And emotion: we would never be so cruel.
Our chickens would live well. Our chickens would prance in the grass and bask in the sun. Our chickens would not know coyotes’ jaws or butchers’ knives or that primal brain-stem shock commanding: run.
We wouldn’t need much.
Just a little house, somewhere not too close but not too far away, with a yard and a coop and a few chickens—maybe five. We would name them after our favorite things: Mad Max, Mothman, Zarathustra, Power-Puff, Eudaimonia. We would swoon at their feathers’ iridescence. We’d sneak our hands beneath their bulk and treasure their warm eggs. We would share the eggs with our neighbors and our neighbors would become our friends and there would be no more strangers. We’d have omelettes for breakfast and bake birthday cakes from scratch. We’d plant a garden. On humid summer evenings meant for porches we’d sit together laughing, swatting mosquitoes, wiping cold can-sweat on our jeans, watching fireflies flicker through the life we grew and tended—
And everything would be perfect.
If only we had chickens!
J.K. Levine, the world’s leading “The Boss Baby” scholar, likes to write cool stories about cool swords. She dreams of one day having her own chickens.