We had two chicks born this summer. They ended up being brothers, one was light and one was black, so we called them sunny and shady. We weren’t sure of their parentage in the beginning. We learned eventually that Sunny’s the son of our bully rooster Reynaulds and somebody else while Shady’s father is probably our favorite rooster but his mother was the long suffering Janice, a black chicken with crazy eyes and a tendency to feel ostracized. 

So it wasn’t a huge surprise when Shady stopped sleeping in the coop, choosing to secret off to some other place where I couldn’t find him. He’s been sleeping rough for months now, I assumed some place in the barn but I couldn’t be bothered to look. 

Now that the rest of the chickens are spooked and sleeping in the barn, I go collect them each night, one at a time. While I was gathering them up I looked around for Shady, I was up on a ladder in the rafters so I figured I should be able to see him, and I did. 

Above a great big mound of poop he was on a rafter, sleeping. Clearly this had been his spot the whole time, given the scale of the poop mountain that was taking over our old mailbox we have stored up there. 

What I found fascinating and entirely endearing about his place is he had chosen a spot on a rafter where I had hung an old pair of moustache handlebars. Chrome, they’re shiny and slung over the rafter, he sleeps between their curving metal arms. 

I was touched when the chickens showed fear, and I’m touched when they show preference. They’re silly little vikings who are mean to one another all the time, they’re abusive little rapist garbage eaters, but I think they’d rather they weren’t. I think they’d rather be good, and some of them even try in their small ways. 

It’s these small things that make it so difficult for me to be comfortable with the death of a chicken, and we’re likely going to kill Shady’s brother this week, he’s just been too mean to some of the ladies he’s meant to protect. 

And when he gets his throat slit I’ll think of the fact that he, a rooster, still sleeps in the nesting box where he and his brother used to hide when they were little. 

Chicken’s ought to be treated with tenderness, we all ought to be.