My Chickens

            In my household there is a rule about pets. They must produce something or otherwise beneficial to our family in some way. I had always wanted a cat but I never could get one because of this completely reasonable rule my parents put in place. I was terribly distraught about the idea of waiting until I was living on my own to get my own cat, and so one night after asking for the umpteenth time if I could get a cat I exasperatedly asked, “Well what pet can I get then??” My dad responded snarky with, “Oh I don’t know, why don’t you get chickens? I hear they make great pets.” And so out of spite I set my heart on obtaining the thing he suggested. I wanted to own a chicken.

            Later that week I was at the library with my mom who was picking up a movie for us to watch when I stumbled upon the first step in my quest. There is a series called For Dummies that explains complicated things in very easy to understand and well-organized books (my personal favorite of which is Windows XP For Dummies which is a hilarious and very outdated book from 2001 that I read from cover to cover). I just so happened to find the Dummy book on the title of Raising Chickens. I asked my mom if I could check it out and she said no; probably because she was just finishing checking out all our other books. Thankfully the exceedingly kind librarian, who I still appreciate very much, said, “Oh it is super easy to add it!” and I passed it over the counter. She was one of those people who could only see the positive side of things and it made me uneasy. After thanking us for checking out books (weird, right?) and telling us how long we had before they were due we were on our way. I lived thirty-five minutes from the library and for the entire ride home I did nothing but read.

            My parents noticed my change in literature choice. I think it was in part that my dad was mad that a book would call its reader a dummy, but also that I wasn’t re-reading Lord of the Rings or some other fantasy adventure novel. After I had read the entire Dummies book cover to cover twice my parents realized I wasn’t going to give this up and so they ordered a real chicken anthology online. This book was much thicker, had much smaller text, had way too few pictures, and was altogether slightly painful to read. It was written by a 79-year-old British man in 1993 and since Chickens are uncharacteristically underrepresented pets the specifics on how to raise them haven’t changed much. At this point I didn’t really know what to think. I was surprised that my parents didn’t squash the idea when I first read the Dummies book because deep down I thought they just didn’t want pets in general. My mom was getting altogether too excited about the idea of having chickens to the point of buying a frittata (a baked omelet) pan to use up all the eggs that we would be getting. My plan of ironic sabotage was failing, but at this point I was kind of happy about the idea of pets around the house. My parents subsequently told me they would have to stay in their coop and I was disappointed but resigned.

            After a two-month process of building a coop with my brother and dad the time finally came to buy the chickens. We had decided on getting Rhode Island Reds based solely on the fact that my dad’s side of the family was living in Rhode Island. We bought them from a local farm half way between Mahomet and Champaign and unloading those little chicks into our boxes at home was one of the most wonderful moments in my life. As they grew they turned from fun chicks to play with into a chore that I had to do every night. But, even on the coldest and foulest of nights I loved seeing them hop around our coop. I finally had pets, even if they were unconventional and weird to the everyday pet owner.

This essay is too long! If anyone sees any unnecessary parts or wordy settings let me know in the comments.