June 2
bigtips
Nancy Drew in 'The Curse of the Dead Chicken'
by M.T. "the Big Tipper" Martone
Despite my Catholic upbringing, I'd say I'm generally free of excessive paranoia or spiritual dread. That said, a series of mysterious and possibly linked occurrences has made me question the apparent randomness of It All.
Fact: One evening, as my sweetie was smoking a rare, illicit cigarette on the back porch, I heard a shriek. "There's a chicken! A dead chicken in the yard!"
This was not the first time she'd cried "chicken." The previous time it had been alive, and sitting in the recycling bin. But that's another story.
This current episode, however, was marked by the unprecedented factor of death. Down in the yard, Kiera the boxer's mouth was ringed with soft feathers. The murderess apparent, she nudged and snuffled at the bird thoughtfully.
At this point it was made clear to me that I needed to get the chicken and dispose of it before it caused any more distress.
I grabbed a few plastic grocery bags, and went
down the back stairs. When I got near the chicken and shooed Kiera away, I saw that it was completely intact except for a small bite to its neck. I picked up its soft warm body, and petted its feathers. I said I was sorry, that it was just a dog's nature to kill chickens, and it had just picked the wrong fence to flap
over.
As I held it, I thought: maybe I should eat it. This is a chicken. I eat chicken. Maybe it's less disrespectful not to waste it. But I couldn't imagine gutting it, or worse, pluckng it. Kiera looked at me hopefully. No way. I wrapped the deceased respectfully in a double layer of bags, and carried it through the house to the trash can out front.
After I washed my hands, I returned to the back porch. My girl looked at me dolefully and said, "You know that we have to tell Alex and Luz that we found their chicken dead in our yard."
Oh no. I'd been ignoring the “provenance of the deceased" issue until this moment, but we both knew that this was our neighbors' chicken, our old Filipino neighbors who are the parents of our landlord. The neighbors who are always inviting us in, cooking us lumpia, who keep chickens as pets, and recently had someone break in and steal a bunch of them. Rats. We thought about not saying anything, but that isn't right.
We went together. Walked up to their door and knocked. Luz answered, beaming.
"Come in, come in!" I answered that we were on our way out, but that we were so sorry, but we'd found a dead chicken in the yard, and we were worried that it was hers. Alex appeared behind her.
"No, they're both in the chicken house." "Are you sure?"
Alex disappeared to go check. He reappeared in a moment, smiling and nodding, "Yes, yes, they're both there."
We were all relieved. Well, then, where did the chicken come from? Luz said that she'd seen that the people two houses down had just gotten chickens recently. So it was probably theirs.
BIG TIPS
Two houses down probably isn't a crack house, technically, but there is a great deal of mysterious traffic in and out of it day and night, and a lot of staring men to be seen whenever I walk past. If I were going to have the death of anyone's poultry on my hands, they would probably be the last I'd choose.
I thought about telling them and offering to buy them a new chicken, but I have no relationship with them, they creep me out, and besides, if that damned chicken had hopped two fences to get to our yard, there's no way we could be accused of coercion. I made sure the lid was securely on the trash can, and was done with the matter.
Or so it seemed. The next morning I stood on the front porch, peering out at the rain and adjusting my Walkman for the walk to the bus. A dark gray, sodden clump on the lawn caught my eye. I picked my way though the sopping grass, and saw that it was a dead pigeon, in the signature claws-up dead bird
despair, having finally scored a copy of Boys Don't Cry at the local video hut, our VCR did a commendable job of playing about 14 previews, an ad for the soundtrack, and then fuzzed out into oblivion. Augh!
Why were the machines in my life failing? This pall of death, was it a curse? Should I have done something different with the chicken? Sewn one of its feet into a tiny muslin bag and worn it around my neck? Made one for each car's rear view mirror? Was the pigeon some sort of curse dessert? I don't know, nor do I think I have angered anyone recently to the degree that they'd
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feel the need to call systematic failure upon my house.
To this day, I don't know what this was all about. Things eventually stopped dying, and they've all been repaired, or have mysteriously righted themselves. I'm left with no clues, but here's what I know:
Next time, I'm eating the chicken.
Burning questions? Contact me at the Chronicle, attention Big Tips, P.O. Box 5426, Cleveland 44101, or fax to 216631-1052, or e-mail to martone @drizzle.com.
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pose. I got two more plastic bags, eulogized Bring your actions into congruence with your values
briefly over the bird that I hoped it had enjoyed his life and hadn't known what had hit him, then tucked him next to the chicken in the trash can, which had now become some sort of aviary Valhalla.
And as easily as I picked up that second bird, things began to die. Within two weeks, first one, then the second of our cars, never in the best of health, spiraled down and refused to start. My computer crashed, taking with it all of girlfriend's unbacked-up work. The cordless phone developed an interesting interface: It worked fine, as long as you only wanted to listen to the person who was calling. Unfortunately, our callers had no way of knowing we were actually on the line, so they would most frequently hang up.
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