Zombie Chickens and Poultrygeists

Rivi and I are sitting on the porch at Boone and Tina’s new house, where they have given Rivi a temporary (or permanent, because who can really say) room in which to live. I have been over helping them to unpack, which has mainly consisted of carrying boxes up a flight or two of stairs, or down into the basement. I have been reminded just how much I hate moving, but I do it without complaint. I’m just happy to have my friends close by again.

“I haven’t seen any ghosts in the house yet,” Rivi says. “I’m very disappointed.”

“You will,” I assure her. “This house is almost as old as ours is. I promise you people have died in it.”

“They better have, or I’m moving back to California.”

I lean forward in my chair. “Listen, child, and I’ll tell you a Stephen King Country story that happened just yesterday at our house.”

“Is it scary?” she asks.

“Don’t know yet. Have to wait and see. Want to hear it or not?”

“Of course I do,” she says. “Spill.”

“So yesterday, as it’s starting to creep over into sunset, Hunter and I are sitting on the porch, because it’s forty-five degrees outside for a change, and we’re enjoying the warmth after weeks of sub-freezing temperatures. There’s still a foot of snow on the ground…”

“As I can see from where I sit,” Rivi interrupts.

“… and it’s super misty, because the warm air is bringing all that moisture up from the snow. It’s really pretty, and it’s really quiet, since we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Not like this nowhere,” she says.

“You live on a corner in a town, right on the street. It’s not the middle of nowhere. Shut up and let me tell the story.”

“Fine. Grump.”

“So we’re sitting on our porch, and Hunter looks out across the field and says, ‘Is that a chicken?’ I look where she’s looking, and sure enough, there’s a chicken walking across the snow, a fat, fluffy hen.

“‘Yep,’ I say. ‘That’s a chicken.’

“’Is it one of ours?’ she asks. The coop with our chickens is on the other side of the property, so it’s doubtful that one of them has come over here. It’s still too snowy for them to want to leave their run, and they hardly ever travel unless it’s in a group. The chicken we are looking at in the field is a breed called a Lavender Orpington, and until a month ago, we had two of them. One of them died back in early February, one of those mysterious chicken deaths which seem to just happen sometimes, where you have no idea what the cause is. As is our tradition with dead chickens, we put her into an open cardboard box and set her out deep in the trees on the property, returning her to nature. Circle of life, and all that.

“’I don’t think that’s ours,’ I say. ‘I’ll go to the coop and count ours, see if anyone is missing.’ I put on my boots and walk over to the coop, and it’s slushy and wet and slippery, so it takes a while to get there. I count the chickens, and then count them again to be sure: twelve chickens. The correct number. I slosh my way back to the other side of the house, and see that Hunter has lured the random chicken closer by leading her with a trail of chicken feed.

“’All our chickens are in the coop,’ I say.

“’I think…’ Hunter says. ‘I think this is our dead chicken.’”

“Shut up,” Rivi says now, peering at me.

“I’m not making this up,” I say. “Now that I can see this chicken up closer, it absolutely looks like our dead one. I know that chickens all look alike to people who don’t keep chickens, but you can definitely tell them apart when you see them every day. This chicken that is pecking at the feed by our porch is the same one that was dead, that I put in a box and carried out into the woods.”

Rivi punches me in the arm. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday? I would have come right over!”

“It was getting dark,” I say. “There wasn’t time to mess around.”

“So what happened next?” she asks.

“I went back to the coop to get the chicken hospital. It’s an old dog crate that we use when we have to quarantine chickens for whatever reason. It’s too big to carry in all the ice and snow, so I just grabbed one end and dragged it across the property, while Hunter kept the zombie chicken occupied with food pellets. When I got close enough, we herded her up onto a snow pile, and then I grabbed her and we stuck her in the hospital.”

“Your dead chicken is now and alive and in the hospital,” Rivi says.

“And the hospital is in the mud room today, because we’re still working out where to keep her until we can reintroduce her to the flock.”

“Your dead chicken, who is now a zombie, is going to be put in with the rest of the alive, not-zombie chickens,” Rivi says.

“More or less,” I say. “I swear to you this chicken was dead when I put her in a box. And even if she was just in a coma or something, it’s been nearly a month. We’ve had negative temperatures, wind chills in the minus twenties, and anything that she could eat is under a foot or two of snow. I have no idea how this chicken survived.”

“And you’re going to put her into the coop with the normal alive chickens,” Rivi says. “This really is Stephen King Country.”

“Right? Do you see what you’re living in now?”

“This is the sexiest place I’ve ever lived,” she says. “Even if it is in the middle of nowhere.”

“You’re not going to be bored,” I assure her.

“I guess not.”

“Might be eaten by zombie chickens, though.”

“Show me a good time, Sebastian,” Rivi says. “Show me a good time.”