A Cheep and Invaluable Experience
“Well, it’s just not easy to have a relationship with a chicken”, my friend concluded as we sat around the table comparing chicken stories. (Yes, we really were.) “I guess I will have to disagree,” I said, images surfacing from my own childhood. “I had a wonderful relationship with a little red rooster. His name was Red, of course. I was about six years old….” I had almost forgotten. The mailman had delivered the cardboard box while I was staying the weekend with my grandparents. And what a box it was! The whole box was bursting with ear-shattering shrill “cheeps”, and it was full of small holes through which tiny beaks frantically poked. Grandma’s batch of spring chicks had arrived! She carefully set the noisy box in the middle of the living room floor where I eagerly helped her open it. “Handle them gently now,” Grandma cautioned me as I…