Remembering Sandy

Content warning: This is not a happy story. It's a story about an animal who probably had only two or three years to live, and didn't get to live even one year. If you are depressive, read something else.

Anyway, since I've posted a free-verse scribble about the hen Loretta and a memoir about the hen Linda, it seems only fair to post one about another memorable pet chicken we had when I was growing up. She belonged to my brother but she did stupid pet tricks with me. We called her Sandy.

Her beginning was unpromising. Some neighbors--of course they were related to us--had had a big farmhouse. One October afternoon it caught fire and burned to the ground. The neighbors rented a house on the edge of town, complained that being in town felt like being in jail to them, and generally browbeat several of our relatives into building a new house ten yards from the site of the old one. When people were unhappy, older people used to give them chickens. I'm not sure about the origins of this custom but it did seem to help; chickens need just enough attention to take people's mind off their grief and get them on their feet a few times every day. So someone gave these people three very pretty bantam-sized Ancona hens, and someone else gave them a pair of Cornish Game chickens, hen and rooster. One of the Ancona hens had rusty spots rather than white spangles on her mostly black feathers.

Well, but the people who wanted to be back in our neighborhood didn't like keeping chickens in town. It wasn't fair to the chickens, they said. Other people kept chickens, who seemed content enough, in fenced yards on their street, but "Wouldn't you children like some more chickens? They're so pretty, if you could teach them tricks they'd make a great show..." 

We took the chickens, and what we learned right away was that Anconas, even bantam-sized Anconas, are aggressive chickens. Only the males were bred to fight each other as a spectator sport for humans to watch and gamble on, but the females are rough and tough enough to live with the males. We had at the time a family of tiny, goodnatured, cuddly Inglebright bantams. The Anconas and even the Cornish Games were much bigger, and rougher. The dominant Ancona hen didn't just peck at the other two--she tore strips off them. 

She was quite tame, had apparently been somebody's pet, but she had very strong prejudices about humans. Women were the kind of humans she was used to. Men, like the son of the old couple who had sent these birds to us, she respected. When released from a shipping box into our chicken shed, she perched on my shoulder and snuggled; she saw me as a woman. My brother, who was almost as tall as I was and whose hands were bigger, reached out to invite her to perch on his hand. She struck out at him like a snake. Her beak was sharp enough to graze the skin visibly, though not to draw blood. She hated children. She classified my brother as a child, and if he approached her she ruffed up the "hackle" feathers on her neck, nonverbally saying "Touch me and I'll bite." 

We didn't want her persecuting our gentle little birds, or my brother. Chicken soup was a possibility we broached at dinner, but we agreed to send her to stay with another neighbor, whose chickens were all much bigger than she was. That mean little hen wasn't likely to do them much harm, we gloated.

Before the Anconas and Cornish Games had been sent to us, it seemed, they had been starting a brood of eggs. Sometimes a group of hens put all their eggs in one place for one hen to rear. This lot had been doing that, and the mean old Ancona hen was the first to go broody and want to rear the eggs. We didn't think she deserved to have babies but that was the way things went. So there were six or eight black chicks, three or four white ones, and the sandy-colored one. The children at the house where this chicken family were now staying naturally called the sandy-colored chick Sandy, and called one of the white ones Andy. 

One day my brother passed by that house and saw the children, who were younger than we were, throwing baby chicks through the air for their dog to fetch. A few years before when he'd seen some other children mistreating a pet chicken he'd knocked them down and brought the chicken home. That year he was old enough to deal with the situation in a more mature manner. "That's no way to treat baby chickens, or dogs either," he said. "What'll you take for the pullet? I've got four dollars."

Andy had turned out to be male; my brother knew better than to bring home another male chicken. Sandy was by this time recognizable as female, but she was no longer sandy-colored. She was white with rust-colored spangles. 

"Not another one of those mean chickens!" our mother said.

"She's not mean. She's shy," I said. "She's already met our hens, and didn't even try to peck back when they pecked at her."

Even the sweet little Inglebrights did a little harmless pecking when the hens stopped brooding and feeding the spring chickens, which process was going on just then. Loretta was one of the spring chickens the hens pecked and chased away from them. Adolescent chickens form sub-groups of their own. Loretta and Sandy became particular friends. The rest of their sub-group included Loretta's brother and a smaller, younger white pullet we called Vickie the Chickie, and a few others who didn't learn tricks or become pets and didn't stay with us long. 

For a month or two, while they were at the right size, Loretta and Sandy liked to ride around in the big patch pockets of the old jacket I put on when practicing stupid pet tricks with the chickens. (They were "clean birds," but I preferred to be safe rather than sorry.) 

They didn't look at all alike. Loretta was a sleek, pretty, dainty little bird, her body only ever about six inches long from neck to tail. Her feathers were always smooth and coal-black, tail feathers usually folded neatly behind her. Sandy was half again the size of Loretta. She had managed to inherit both the full, round breast of a Cornish Game and the triangular frame of an Ancona; all her body mass was up front. She looked from a chicken fancier's point of view like a mongrel and a freak, but she worked with what she had. She was one of the minority of chickens who can leap up off the ground and flap several yards. Even Sandy couldn't fly very high or far, but she could fly all the way over our house, lengthwise--about 25 yards, counting the distance it took her to gain and lose altitude: more in the way of flying than any other chicken we kept ever managed. (Though not even half of the world's record: the longest documented flight of a chicken was just over 100 yards.)

"Being pocket peeps" was Loretta's and Sandy's own idea. They would approach me together. Loretta would stand still and chirp, inviting me to pick her up, so she could get into my pocket. Sandy would fly up, perch on the edge of the pocket, and lower herself down into it. They would ride around with their heads sticking out over the pocket tops. After they grew too big to fit into pockets, they rode around on my shoulders. 

We worked with about thirty chickens that summer. Most of them never did any real tricks beyond coming when called and greeting people who wanted to take a chicken home. The ones we kept, going into the winter, were Sandy and Loretta, Vickie the Chickie, Loretta's brother Grayling, and two older hens called Silver and Spartan. Silver had reared Loretta and Grayling; Spartan had reared Vickie and others...that's another story. Spartan was my brother's special pet, and always had been. Dad wanted my natural sister to be part of the show and have a pet chicken who did tricks with her; Silver was officially her pet but Silver's only trick was perching on someone's arm, and mostly she perched on mine.

How is it possible to work with chickens? Most of the work consists of teaching them to trust you and come close to you. That done, some people have spent a lot of time and energy teaching the empty-headed birds to peck out tunes on xylophones or push checkers around a board,  but we never aspired to anything so complicated. We just watched for a chicken to do something that could be made to seem cute or clever, and tried to get the bird to do the same thing again, reliably, on cue. Chirp when its name came up in a song. Step forward when asked. Point to an object. Chickens can see colors and can learn to do all sorts of variations on the theme of "pick out the red ball." Most chickens don't seem to recognize words, or even tunes, but a few of ours learned dozens of words. 

Sandy's main trick was her ability to leap up and fly. Her preference to fly to and perch on me seemed to have more to do with her relationships with other chickens than it did with a preference between us; she seemed to like both of us. The thing was that Loretta liked sharing her human with her best buddy, while Spartan might have been just a bit jealous of my brother, as well as protective of Vickie the Chickie. Spartan growled and pecked at Sandy if Sandy came too close to Vickie, though Sandy had never threatened Vickie. 

Vickie the Chickie never learned anything. She couldn't even be said to come when called. She followed when the other chickens were called. Her only contribution to any show was that she was tiny and pure white; but Spartan seemed so attached to her that we didn't want to let her go.

Sandy's moment of glory occurred one afternoon while I was still on the school bus. My brother and sister were at home to see it. Hawks often rear their chicks in autumn. A hawk with chicks to feed can become desperate. Most hawks don't eat other birds if they're not starving; when red-tailed hawks eat other birds they tend to lose their health. Sometimes hawks have taken chickens to their aeries to feed to babies who were not quite starving, and the hawk family ended up keeping the chickens as pets. Who knows whether that was what almost happened to Vickie the Chickie. In any case a big female red-tailed hawk stooped as if to seize the smallest, youngest chicken in the flock. 

Sandy chirped a warning. Vickie, and the other chickens, scattered and hid under bushes. Chickens are not known for their courage.

But Sandy was not a normal chicken--everyone always said that. Sandy was a mongrel, a freak. Sandy, my siblings reported, charged at the hawk. The hawk flew up into the air, to stoop and sink her talons into Sandy. Sandy flew up into the air too. Disconcerted, the hawk dropped to the ground, and Sandy blinded the hawk on one side. The hawk tried to defend herself, and pulled out most of Sandy's tail feathers. Sandy flew up again, settled on the hawk's back, tore strips off the hawk with her beak and claws while slapping the hawk silly with her wings. Then my brother ran out and whacked the hawk with a stick. Bleeding and confused, the hawk flew away. 

She had a name, now, that hawk. People could recognize her. She was Old One Eye.

Grayling was staring at Sandy in wonderment, by the time I came home, and Sandy was keeping her back end toward the bushes, not wanting Grayling to see her without long tail feathers fanned out behind her. Most birds seem to be a bit vain about their tail feathers. 

Spartan showed much more respect to Sandy after that day. All of them did. And also, after that day, the chickens were positively stalked by two red-tailed hawks. "Old One Eye" and her mate seemed bent on revenge. One of us had to be out with them whenever the chickens were outdoors. Even when my sister was out with them, Old One Eye tore out Grayling's tail feathers. But that only seemed to give him and Sandy more of a bond. They mated. Sandy laid a few eggs in between Christmas and New Year's Day. The eggs could have hatched, but who tries to raise chickens in winter? We ate them.

It was never as much of a pleasure as a duty, but some winters we had to spend a few weeks with "Aunt Dotty" and "Uncle Pete" in Florida. That was one of the winters. Dad stayed at home; he had some jobs to do. 

As teenagers neither of us minded being separated from our parents for a few weeks, but Mother and Dad hated to spend a single night apart. They wrote letters and mailed them every day, not caring how many letters crossed in the mail. 

Dad wrote that every time he went outside long enough to let our bantams come out with him, which he tried to do every day, he saw at least one of the hawks. Watching. 

One day, his letter reported, he'd gone into a shed for just a few minutes. When he came out, Old One Eye and her mate were taking their revenge. Hawks aren't very good fighters on the ground; if they're going to kill chickens they have to drop onto the chickens' backs out of the air. Old One Eye managed to drop onto Sandy's back, and her mate onto Spartan's, during the minutes Dad was in the shed. When he came out they flew up, leaving the two hens dead on the ground. Then the male hawk dropped again and carried off Vickie the Chickie.

They knew what they were doing, we said. 

I forget now who shot Old One Eye. It was not considered much of a feat. Euthanasia, really. By the time we came home the three remaining chickens were free to roam, unmolested; but none of us ever wanted to turn the chickens out for the day and forget about them, ever again.