THE APRIL FOOL CHICKEN


One spring morning I walked into our suburban house just as Richard, my seventeen-year-old son, dashed past me out the door. “Where are you going?” I hollered.

“Gotta pick up my chicken,” he said, saying something about a friend who had a bantam rooster needing a good home. He revved up his ’56 Chevy and screeched out of the driveway.

“Oh sure,” I muttered, reminding myself that it was April first -- April Fool’s Day. I thought no more about it until the middle of the night when I heard this terrible noise outside my window. The middle of the night turned out to be pre-dawn -- four AM. The terrible noise turned out to be the promised chicken.

At breakfast I turned my bleary eyes on Richard and said, “Why?” pointing toward the sliding glass door to the patio where the colorful rooster could be seen strutting around as if he owned the place.

Richard met my gaze. “You know I’ve always wanted a chicken,” he said, as if it was something that all teenage boys wanted.

“I have never heard you mention this before,” I protested, trying to ignore the fierce stare of the beady-eyed rooster outside

A few months later Richard graduated from high school and moved into a tiny apartment with his buddy Mark. Guess who got temporary custody of the April fool chicken!

That evil-eyed rooster continued to wake me up in the middle of the night. Richard continued to promise that he was looking for another “good home” for the chicken. That chicken continued to terrorize all of the neighborhood cats and dogs that dared to approach our backyard for the next year and a half.

I finally sold the house and moved into a small apartment. The April fool chicken moved across the back fence into the yard of a neighbor who had grown fond of it.

I’d been looking forward to a different kind of alarm clock – one I could actually set and control. The first night in my new apartment I suddenly woke to a strange noise. I looked over at the clock. Four a.m. The strange noise was silence. Even stranger was the fact that I found I sort of missed that feisty April fool chicken.