I Have Always Loved Chickens

When I was little, I relished trips to my aunt Sadie and uncle Irving’s farm.  There were many reasons, including the freedom to run free with my brother in the sweet-smelling grass, in the country air.

The best reasons, however, were the chickens.

When I was quite young, I was allergic to dog and cat hair.  It had always seemed to me that this was an all-too-convenient reason for my parents to deny me a pet.  My mother of blessed memory said more than once she did not think I could take responsibility for a pet, so she would have to take care of it, something she would not enjoy. Now I take care of people for a living.  Go figure …

I had been promised that when we went to the farm, I could “hold a chicken.” I overheard my elders eliminate the baby chickens, which were allegedly too fragile.  Also, they could still be in incubators or under heat lamps or something.

Maybe a pullet?  Uncle Irving did not seem to think he could run fast enough to catch one. Finally he brought me an adult chicken.  Her color and identity were apparently “Rhode Island Red,” so at least I knew she came from New England. I could barely hold her with both my arms. The expression on her face was as confused as I have ever seen a chicken look.  Her little chicken heart was throbbing wildly. She went on to relieve herself.  Of course, hilarious hijinx ensued. I had not been close to a living chicken since, although my mother-in-law of blessed memory loved ceramic chickens, and one of our often-frequented restaurants has a large ceramic rooster, whose neck is festooned with all manner of charms, by the cash register. The real reason I am writing this is that a few days ago, I saw a newborn chicken poke it’s way out of a shell, up close. The chicklette (we all somehow felt she was female) and her eggshell were in the hand of a self-taught by book-learning Gulf War veteran farmer. He explained many things to me as I cheered on the chicken at standing up and dumping her shell, which cleaved to her by a bloody little eggshell-tethered umbilicus. Perhaps the most important thing I learned is that a chicken who does not stand quickly enough will grow a too-large head which it will never be able to lift, and remain a seriously handicapped chicken. I am not the only person who loves chickens. Of course, it seems that mostly people love to eat them.  They are reputedly the world’s second most frequent source of dietary protein, after the pig. (Pig popularity only proves that neither Jews nor Moslems have taken over the world as of this writing.)I will admit I was happily surprised to find that the Brits set up a three million dollar grant to study the human-chicken relationship. I am gratified that the lead photo for this report is that of a (seemingly female) human holding a (seemingly) Rhode Island Red. Somehow or other, the chicken seems to have served as something more like a religious ritual animal, or even a recreational one — i.e. “cockfighting.”  Apparently people were buried with same-sex fowl feathered friends in a village in medieval Austria.

Although I have a fondness for chickens, I have a little trouble with radical (often Jewish) analogies such as the writing of Roberta Kalechofsky — a vegan who compares the eating of animals to the gross genocide of Jews during the Holocaust. Of course, since freedom of religion reigns, people take what they want from their faith, and discard what they do not want. To me, Genesis 1:26 is pretty unequivocal. “And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth.” I suppose I am a “humanist,” for humans are far and a way my favorite species. I do believe in evolution.  If there were any doubts about what humans should eat, a simple study I did long ago for an undergraduate class in comparative vertebrate anatomy had me convinced that we are born to be “omnivores.” Plants are much more difficult for vertebral systems to digest than animals.  Vertebrates that eat plants exclusively, or “herbivores,” have quite a long digestive tract as correlated to their size and weight.  “Carnivores,” that eat exclusively animal foods, have far shorter digestive tracts. Humans are squarely and completely between the two extremes, with a digestive tract that seems “made” to digest either. At least one psychologist seems to have an abiding professional interest in the human-chicken relationship. This Sacramento professor researches human-chicken relationships and has an online survey you can take (it is brief). I have spent enough time practicing in rural areas to have actually treated folks who have had — well, “pathological” relationships with farm animals.  From Oklahoma to Alberta (Canada), I have encouraged people who live on farms to do the extra work that may be required in order to have satisfying relationships with both sentient and verbal members of one’s own species. Humor is another of my strong interests. Somehow or other, from Oklahoma to Alberta, animals in general — and chickens in particular — are the subjects of jokes. When I was in private practice in Oklahoma, I publicized by writing an article on grieving for deceased pets and the nature of the human-pet relationship. The relationship a human has to a pet is the ultimate “transference” relationship.

People always bring their past experiences with other humans into their present human relationships.  But a relationship with a pet begs for interpretation.  I mean, how do we really know that a dog is happy when he (or she) starts wagging his (or her) tail?  The human interacting with said pet has just done something he (or she) perceived as worthy of generating happiness. But why the heck are chickens funny? The basis of the humor has to be physical, since most chickens known to me are dramatically nonverbal. The web seems to have as many funny chicken videos as cute kitten videos.

It has long been known that anything with a larger head-to-body ratio is perceived by humans as more “cute.”  I learned this one really long ago, in an undergraduate university child psychology course, for this is believed to be at least part of why mothers (pretty much always) consider babies “cute.” This would account for the attraction of baby chicks, who do indeed have a large head-to-body ratio.As the chicken matures, the head-to-body ratio seems to me to become rather incredibly small.  This may account for at least some of the visual humor of the adult chicken, such as is seen on the first video of the above compilation. Chickens do have not only small heads, but also small brains. I am the authority on this one.  For years I have enjoyed telling people that my Bobie, my grandmother of blessed memory, was my first neurosurgery preceptor. While she was preparing a chicken cadaver for the cooking-pot, I could not have been over five when I requested the right to cut away the chicken’s skull and look at the brain. It was a tiny thing to be sure, with none of the “wrinkles” visible on a human or mammalian cortex.  Still, it had proportionately large, if smooth, spherical cortex that must have been olfactory. Chickens can smell.  My guess is they can smell a lot. Chickens in walking motion do have a movement that may be a source of humor. They seem to lead by pushing their heads forward, and letting the head slip backwards while moving their body forwards. Now — sit back!  I have not yet dealt with the sex life of domesticated fowl. Roosters do have a mating dance, properly known as “tidbitting.” Here it is in the ubiquitous and obligatory youtube video: Since presumably the sexes have an equal chance of getting born, I will admit to having wondered why there are so few roosters and so many chickens in the world.

Leave it to the enterprising reporters at Al-Jazeera to have the most direct and descriptive article about this one.  I think we should call this “roostercide.” So roosters are usually headed straight for the grinder and consequent animal feed, with their protein richer meat? Doesn’t quite compensate for other cultures where I have heard female embryos are sometimes aborted in favor of male offspring. The French may have been doing it a little differently, as I ate my share of “coq au vin” — rooster stewed in wine — while living in that country. I have often called token males, such as the only male nurse on a large nursing service, “the rooster in the henhouse.” There is clearly an aura of female sexual superiority in this bird species — so much so I am starting to wonder how the feminists missed using the chicken as a symbol.  Perhaps the humor element was just too great. Now for the “Stranger than Fiction” part of this story — The chicken can not only lay eggs without having anything at all to do with a rooster, but can also practice “seminal evacuation” if father rooster was too low in the pecking order. Why do I have a feeling that the chicken would prefer privacy for this action? This gives us a new answer to “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

THE END