Christmas in Asheville

It wouldn't be Christmas in Asheville, it seems, if we didn't find ourselves herding chickens.

The same chickens, in fact, who had survived Audrey's hunting expedition in September. It was, without a doubt, our duty to see them safely home, both as a matter of holiday good will and because we still feel kind of guilty about the whole Audrey-catches-a-chicken thing.

Fittingly enough, Christmas kicked off with an invitation from the chickens' owner.

It was the 22nd, a Saturday, and she really issued the invitation to our housekeeper. I saw the two of them chatting in front of the house and thought it was nice that a Spanish-speaking neighbor would take the time to chat with our shy, non-English-speaking housekeeper.

Then she turned to me and Hubby. Her tenant, she explained, missed his home in Mexico and was anxious to meet some neighbors. Now. At this moment on a darkening Saturday afternoon before Christmas.

She was quite insistent.

I explained that I had to take our housekeeper home, and the chicken-neighbor assured me our housekeeper had already accepted her invitation. It kind of surprised me to hear this, but I thought maybe our housekeeper knew the chicken-neighbor. And it wasn't like I had anywhere I absolutely had to be.

So off we trooped, Hubby with The Boy in front, our housekeeper walking uncertainly behind them, and me taking up the rear, so as to be respectful of the housekeeper, who seemed as unclear about what we were heading into as we were.

A man we took to be the tenant from Mexico stood on the front porch with another man, smoking cigarettes and speaking in hushed, relaxed voices. They stopped talking and watched with mild interest as we straggled through the front gate.

Hubby turned to me. "Are we sure this is the right house?" he asked.

My response was not as positive as it might have been.

The man we took to be the tenant from Mexico finally asked if we were friends of the chicken-neighbor. He seemed quite unaware of his anxiety to meet some neighbors.

We made our way inside to find a polite but lost-looking college student seated at a table set with ham and a small cooked chicken. Awkwardness ensued.

I looked out the propped open back door onto the screened porch and admired the chickens peeking inside at me.

I asked if the cooked chicken on the table had once resided in the yard. Our chicken-neighbor assured me it had not.

Hubby and the housekeeper ate some of the store-bought chicken and some ham and some pecan pie.

At some point, our housekeeper gave me the nod, and we wished everyone a happy holiday and set out to continue ours. In the car on the way to her house I asked if she knew the chicken-neighbor. She told me she didn't. I told her I didn't really either and felt released from any responsibility.

Hubby and I failed to return the chicken-neighbor's invitation the next day when other neighbors came by to share The Boy's first birthday cake. No doubt it would have been the neighborly thing for us to do, but I think we were both still a little bit shaken by the awkwardness.

And, really, chickens were the last thing on our mind as we watched The Boy open the first of his gifts on Christmas eve. My mind, in fact, was taken up with a horrifying realization. Both of the gifts we gave him to open were from his aunts -- a tradition Hubby wanted to carry on from his childhood. And both of the presents required assembly.

This fact alone is not a cause for terror. We'd have plenty of time to put them together on Christmas Day, after all.

This year.

But in a flash I saw The Boy at two years old, when he would not calmly examine the box with the toy that required assembly and look at us with a perfectly happy four-and-a-half tooth smile and drool on his chin. Instead, he would scream as Hubby and I, hands shaking from the pressure, struggled to understand the instructional pictures that have now replaced any attempts to explain in clear English how to assemble a toy but have failed to make it any easier. Plainly, Hubby and I agreed, we would have to budget pre-Christmas time for gift assembly in the future.

And therein lay the horror. Exhausted from the effort of buying and wrapping gifts for an expanding family and a child with the bad luck to be born on December 23, I tried to imagine how -- where on earth -- I will find the time next year to also assemble gifts. Of course, I knew. Gone will be Mommy's time for sleep. Which should make for an especially pleasurable holiday season.

This year, however, was proving most pleasant. It was Christmas afternoon, The Boy was upstairs snoozing away the overwhelming fact of three straight days of gifts, and Hubby and I were enjoying the quiet of a house with a sleeping baby.

Then Audrey broke the silence with a strangled cry of excitement and frustration. Across the street, the chickens were taking a stroll down the block.

Our first instinct was to take pictures.

After a few minutes I asked Hubby if it wouldn't be the neighborly thing to put them back in their yard.

"Can you herd chickens?" he asked, quite reasonably.

I recalled how our next door neighbor had rounded the corner of our house with the chicken Audrey caught wrapped gently in her tee-shirt. The chicken had seemed calm and not inclined to peck. After all, I told myself, they let someone reach underneath them to take their eggs. Surely I could just sidle up to them, one by one, scoop them up, and deposit them in the hen house.

Except that, up close, these chickens were really big. Exceptionally beautiful, I noted, as I admired the fluff of feathers above their talons and the way the black and brown melted together over their sharp beaks. Surely holiday samaritanism didn't extend to being pecked and clawed by angry chickens whose walk I was interrupting.

Yet, bravely, I crept closer.

One of the chickens made a run for it. "No!" I yelled, shooing it back onto someone's front lawn. "Don't go in the street!" If that chicken found itself under a car's tire on my watch, I thought, I would forever be branded a chicken killer or, at least, very bad luck for any chickens who happen to cross my path.

Hubby ran ahead to do some reconnaissance. There was an open gate, he said, but could we be sure that was how the chickens had escaped?

We couldn't, but there is only so much one can be expected to do when a neighbor's chickens are taking a Christmas walk through the neighborhood.

So I herded them.

Maybe it's a skill I've picked up in four months of country living. Maybe it was simply ingenuity borne of necessity. Maybe the city girl in me hates to back down.

But I managed to get the chickens to the side yard, where Hubby waited with his hand on the open gate.

"Go home," I said sternly, as one might to a vicious looking dog who you just know will be obedient enough to take your order to heart if only you sound serious enough and wish it to be the case hard enough.

The chickens pretended not to understand.

I made as if to pick one up. I can't say if I would have -- if, say, I would have actually touched it had the chicken called me on my game of chicken. Luckily, it blinked first and ran for the safety of the yard.

And with that example set, it wasn't too hard to convince the others that bolting for the yard was a great idea. They are, after all, chickens, who I understand are not particularly original thinkers.

As for us, Hubby and I felt a little bit less ashamed about all the presents we and The Boy had received from other lovely neighbors over the past few days. Birthday and Christmas gifts for The Boy, cookies and party invitations for us. Just when you think you know how well you picked your new home, you find out the neighbors are even more neighborly than you had imagined.

Hubby and I may not have bought gifts for the other kids on the block, and we still haven't delivered holiday cards because we disagree about the name of one neighbor and want to make sure we get it right before we drop off any of the cards and, besides, now I have to write thank you notes as well. We may, in short, have been unprepared for just how generous the people living around one can be. But at least by herding the chickens home we contributed our little bit of kindness to Christmas on our block.