Chickens Know No Shame

Did you ever spot your toy poodle laying on the kitchen floor, and start calling him excitedly while waving his favorite vanilla-smelling blue rubber ball, then bounce it and roll it under the dining room table? Because in case you didn't, I imagine that little black dog would start spinning his clicky-toenailed feet like a cartoon in an effort to gain traction on the vinyl floor and chase that ball. Just sayin'...

For three of the past four mornings, I have been awakened by a galloping beast and a squawking chicken right outside the French doors that lead from my bedroom to the back porch. The sound of scrabbling canine toenails reminds me of my childhood dog, Buster, trying to find Ball. It is quite irritating to salute the morning with such turmoil. At first, I blamed the dog.

This morning, in that state that is not quite sleep, and not quite wakefulness, I heard a tapping. Something gently rapping. Tap tap tapping just outside my bedroom door. I sat up, bending only at the waist, creepily, in fact, much like Michael Myers behind Jamie Lee Curtis after she thinks she has killed him in the upstairs bedroom after he attacks her in the closet in the original Halloween. That was the sound of a chicken pecking. Pecking at dry dog food in a metal dog dish on the back porch.

That darn chicken was the instigator. What self-respecting dog can lay idly by while a chicken invades his food bowl? Not the Mansion dogs, that's for sure. And chickens do not belong on the porch. She deserved what she got: the loss of a pillow-full of feathers. I know which chicken, too. Gray feathers. Bald chicken.

I still yelled at the dog, though. You can't yell at a chicken. They know no shame.