Audrey Catches a Chicken

When you live in California, there are many things that run through your mind when your new neighbor tells you your dog "got a chicken." Usually it is something like, "Can Audrey really steal those chicken breasts I was defrosting out of the sink?" or, "I've really been meaning to wash that dirty stuffed chicken toy."

But when you have just moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and when the people who come to build you a fence or put on storm windows say things like, "Ah'll bit that hawand o' yers cewd ketch hersef sem chickens," and when your neighbor, R., is standing on your front porch, breathless and slightly wild-eyed, it occurs to you that maybe the chicken in Audrey's mouth is alive.

Or, worse, isn't.

Before I could figure out how one should respond when one's new neighbor of barely two weeks informs one that one's dog has dispatched a neighbor's chicken, R.'s partner, M., dashed up the walk. She leaned forward, hands on knees, like a runner recovering from a particularly spirited 10K. R. and I waited wordlessly to hear the chicken's fate while Audrey slunk guiltily past me and inside the front door, where she plopped down with the heavy regret of someone who has done something she knows is terribly wrong but would do again in heartbeat.

"I yelled at her to drop it, and she did," M. panted approvingly. M. is a lover of dogs and perhaps more forgiving than the chicken's owner might be.

"I was just really worried for her," R. explained, unaccountably more concerned for Audrey than for the chicken. This was good news. Perhaps dogs ate live chickens as a regular matter in Asheville. Perhaps my block was home to a roaming flock of feral chickens and Audrey had done everyone a favor. Maybe they would ask me to have her do regular chicken patrol. "I was driving home and she ran right in front of my car."

"I was working out front, and R. got out of the car going, 'Dog. Chicken." M. smiled, and I felt grateful and helpless. "I knew right away she was talking about Audrey. I saw her wandering around about half an hour ago, but I figured you were close by somewhere. I guess she got into S.J.'s yard."

My brief moment of relief evaporated. This was no roaming feral chicken, but the pet of a soft-spoken neighbor who had stopped by to introduce herself just a few days before.

Worse, for the past half hour, as Audrey stalked her prey, I had been inside playing with The Boy, coaxing him into a nap, blending sweet potatoes for him, all in blissful ignorance of the fact that I had locked the dogs outside without blocking the stairs from the deck to the as-yet-unfenced yard with the disassembled Weber kettle and dented metal trashcan that were supposed to prevent things like Audrey getting out and eating a neighborhood chicken.

"You know," M. continued, as I continued to stare helplessly, rooted to my beautiful new porch as my beautiful eight-month-old baby snoozed upstairs in his very own room. "I'd better go see if the chicken is still alive."

She set off with the confidence and purpose I sorely lacked, having been raised in Los Angeles where most people are unfamiliar with the etiquette that accompanies your dog catching someone else's chicken.

R. turned to me, her skin a shade paler than usual, her eyes bluer and wide with fear. "I just know she's going to wring its neck," she informed me. "She's a country girl."

I hasten to draw attention to this designation. All evidence to the contrary, we do not live in the country. We have moved to a city, where one does not expect to find chickens roaming the streets and only country girls are equipped to deal with the fallout when they do.

"I don't know what to do," I finally admitted, as if stating this obvious fact would prove a corrective.

It didn't. But that was okay because M. reappeared, gently cradling the chicken, now wrapped in her tee-shirt and looking around with a vigor that would suggest she was, at least, not at death's door. The bird was actually quite pretty, with fluffy gold feathers that I could too easily picture against the soft chocolate brown of Audrey's muzzle.

"I don't think S.J.'s home," R. informed me. I wish I could say that at this point I sprang into action, but the truth is I was even more woefully unprepared to deal with this situation than I would have guessed. "Maybe we should call a vet."

Relieved, I watched her pull out her cell phone. Paying for a vet's bill I could do. We had, after all, just paid nearly double what we were quoted to have our furniture delivered (a story for another, less amused, posting). How bad could a veterinary bill be?

Quite bad, according to R., when she told me our only option was the emergency vet that charges $200 when you walk in the door. Asheville, it turns out, is home to two chicken doctors, but neither of them works on Wednesdays.

"I really think she's okay," M. said. The chicken was looking around with a fairly calm expression. On the other hand, I'm not really sure what expression a panicked chicken would wear. I'm not even sure chickens have expressions. "Do you have any moving boxes? We could put her in one and leave her by S.J's front door."

Moving boxes I had. With the glee of a useless person who finally has a job to do, I rushed into the room that will one day be Hubby's office (Hubby's office! My office! We have a real house with lots of rooms!), dumped some books out of a box, and lined it with an old pink towel. Ironically, we bought that towel at the Target in Lancaster, half an hour before we bought Audrey. She slept on it during her housebreaking period when we relegated her to the kitchen during the night. Perhaps she was now wreaking her revenge.

Back on the front porch, I proffered the box and watched as M. lowered the chicken into it. "I'll bring her over to S.J.'s," R. volunteered.

One may note that I had not, at this point, touched the chicken or anything touching it. It's not that I'm afraid of chickens. I'm just not used to seeing them on my front porch. Not that I've ever had a front porch before. Still, even when imagining the front porch I would one day have, my fantasies involved rocking chairs and porch swings and a hound or two, not chickens. Hubby, who has longed for a front porch far longer than I, no doubt concurs that one does not expect an injured chicken in a box to be part of the picture.

"I'm going to write S.J. a note," I declared. Here is something I know how to do. I know how to take responsibility for property damage and how to commit one's responsibility and remorse to writing. I know this not only from three years of otherwise shockingly pointless training at Columbia Law School, but as a human being who was truly, truly sorry that my dog had, at the very least, traumatized S.J.'s chicken.

As I scrawled words of apology and promises to pay for vet bills or, if need be, a new chicken, I saw that S.J. had joined R. across the street. Fine. Good. I deserved to fess up to the sins of my hound in person. I was prepared to be contrite.

I crossed the street waving the note and yelling that I was sorry, so sorry. S.J. stroked the chicken as she sized me up. "It's okay," she said quietly. "It's what dogs do. If these chickens were fatter they couldn't of got through the fence."

So at least Audrey hadn't gone hunting in S.J.'s fenced yard. At least the chickens were hanging out in front of the house, casting the scent of dinner and a few stray feathers into the breeze. A bloodhound could hardly be expected to ignore that.

"I'm not supposed to have them anyway," S.J. confessed. I am pausing here to consider highlighting that sentence. People who live in the city limits of Asheville are not supposed to have chickens. This fact seems to be of immense importance to every member of my family to whom I have related this story.

Just as I was feeling better, S.J. added, "I wonder what scared them out of the yard." I couldn't read her look. It was no secret that the logical cause of the scare would be Audrey. But that possibility somehow rendered her more guilty and me a worse neighbor for letting my preoccupation with my baby create this mess. (Said baby, by the way, was now awake and perched on my hip taking in the commotion with great interest. In case you think I'm an even worse mother than I am a neighbor and would leave my sleeping baby alone as I wandered across the street to offer mea culpas to my illicit-chicken-raising neighbor.)

"Please let me know if I can pay for vet bills or anything," I repeated, since there was really nothing else I could say. Somehow I suspected she would not take me up on my offer, which left me feeling worse, as if making the payment could wipe out my error, a Catholic confession for Jewish owners of chicken-hunting dogs.

"I'll just see if she's okay in the morning," S.J. said matter-of-factly. "If she's not, I'll fry her up."

This plain lack of sentiment lifted the slick wash of nausea I had been experiencing for the past hour and allowed me to even look forward to telling Hubby about the excitement when he got home from work.

He leaned back in one of our porch chairs, drink in one hand, The Boy in the other, and on his face I read extreme pride that he found himself a homeowner in this neighborhood of hounds and chickens and homes with front porches where you can sit with a drink after work.

From next door, M. waved. "Thanks for helping with the chicken!" Hubby greeted her.

"Oh, you didn't hear the best part," M. informed us. "I went into S.J.'s yard with her so she could show me how to put the chickens back in the coop if they ever get out again, and there was a rat in the coop."

"Ergh!" Hubby and I both exclaimed like the city folk we are.

"It was trying to get out, but its hind legs were caught and it was scrambling and going 'eeeech, eeeech!'" M. gave us an impressive imitation of a rat with its hind legs caught in chicken wire.

Hubby and I leaned over the porch, a rapt and slightly disgusted audience.

M. smiled and reeled us in. "I was like, 'oh,'" -- expression of similar disgust -- " and S.J. just said, 'Well we can't have that,' and picked up a two-by-four and just brained it."

"Aaaah," Hubby and I gasped in collective delight at the beauty of this horrible image. M. showed us how she had hidden her face as S.J. gave the rat its send-off, proving that she is not much of a country girl after all and probably wouldn't have wrung that chicken's neck had the situation warranted it. S.J., on the other hand, surely wasn't kidding when she said she would fry up the chicken if she didn't recover.

I ran into S.J. the other day, both of us taking a walk at the far end of the block. A middle-aged couple from New York, a thin young mother from Nantucket, at least one artist, and an Audi TT separated us from the chicken coop.

"How's the chicken?" I asked, expecting to hear either of a full recovery or a mighty tasty meal.

"Not so good," S.J. said with more honesty than I would have liked. "She can't stand up."

"I'm so sorry," I breathed in disappointment and genuine sadness. I could have made the vet bill offer again, but apparently people who own chickens understand that there is some fundamental difference between them and the kinds of pets you would take to a vet. Which perhaps explains why chicken doctors in Asheville have Wednesdays off.

"I'm not supposed to have them," S.J. sighed. Which, I guess, is the moral of the story. And an apt summary of what it is like to live on our block, where you can just see Asheville turning into a place where a family from Long Beach can fit right in.