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was a silver-spangled hamburg purebred we bought off craigslist several months ago.
and she was different.
a special chicken.
a chicken...yeah, a goddamn chicken, and i teared up when i found her dead at the bottom of her cage today.
chloe wasn't just an excellent source of low-fat protein.
no...chloe was an old soul.
you know the type.
with intelligent eyes. thinking. appraising. happy eyes.
i am not shitting you.
i am not shitting you.
that little girl would sit there and snuggle and spread her wings and chirp away.
roll around and scratch.
following me like a puppy.
taking flight and landing on my head, my shoulder...
sometimes squirting a turd.
but it didn't matter. it wasn't malicious. she just had to take a shit, i guess.
but she died today and i buried her.
this little bird.
with four white hibiscus flowers, under a cactus tree.
and i never thought i'd feel any type of emotion for a bird, let alone a chicken.
some selection on a menu.
super-sized # 2.
a McNugget.
but holding her limp body, eyes closed as if she were asleep,
i had to take a seat and hold her one last time.
yet people are dying every second.
children are starving.
soldiers ripped apart by IEDs.
chickens slaughtered by the millions.
and chloe; our chicken, this little girl, just ounces of feathers and meat, died today.
you know what?
yeah, i'm a little sad.
just hours before, she sat in my hand, sneezed a few times, peered up at me, and rested her head on my palm.
this chicken.
chloe.
goddamn it, she was just a chicken.
i eat chickens.
fried;
baked;
dipped in hot sauce;
mucked up in some freaking soup.
but chloe's in the ground right now.
a dead chicken. alive for a few months.
just a brief spark of life.
with an old soul.
and i miss her already.
