The story of Peckles

The first thing I thought this morning, when I woke up, was that I had lost the ability to parse language. I heard someone talking, but it didn't sound like words, English or otherwise. It sounded like...warbling...almost like a chicken. But it stopped, and I chalked it up to a semi-dream state, and laid there for a while thinking about going back to sleep, and how annoying it will be to own a rooster (Travis's interest in farming has recently come back with a fury. I'm down as long as it's in New Mexico, and there are alpacas.) Eventually I got up and wandered out of the bedroom.

"Uh... did you hear a chicken?"

Ok, good, so I didn't have some kind of aphasia. Whew. And yes, I had heard a chicken.

A few minutes later, we heard it again, louder. I looked out all the windows, thinking someone might have on in the parking lot or something. No go.

About an hour later, we go to take the dog for a walk.


And there was Peckles, approximately 8 feet from our door. On the third floor. How does a chicken even get to the third floor?



Turns out, Peckles has the unusual gift of chicken flight. After taking a bunch of glamor shots, I tried to feed him some cereal and accidentally scared him into a tree, some respectable distance away.




Here I must clarify: we do not live in the country. I have no IDEA how far away the nearest farm is. While we're technically outside of Portland (just barely) we're still in a relatively urban-ish area. Yeah, there are trees, and we live on a "lake", but we're still pretty much in downtown Milwaukie.

W.T.F.

Travis thinks it's an omen that he's on the right path, farmingwise (if this is correct, does my scaring it away by trying to feed it mean that I will try to help but accidentally crush his dreams? Probably.) I think it's the Ghost of Chickens Past, the first of three livestock-based entities that will visit in order to show us the folly of our ways and set us on a righteous path, possibly one of a vegetarian persuasion.

I hope not, I like chicken. And the durn thing flew away before teaching me much of anything.