A chicken in every...

The keeping of chickens in this day and age, especially if one is not historically from farm stock or living in Iowa, is legitimate cause for comment. In truth, the three people I've met who keep chickens find endless opportunities to bring up the hilarious antics of their useful, eco-friendly pets (no one keeps them for meat, after all). And upon being introduced to the chickens of one's friends, it's easy to jump on the bandwagon (band coop?). Chickens are hysterically funny in their bobbing, strutting, pea-brained way. They might not snuggle up to you like a kitten, but they, like all domesticated animals, certainly know how to capture the fond attention of The One With The Food.

A friend in Austin has roommates who keep chickens, three of the standard orange-y/red feathered sort (though one apparently lays blue eggs). I discovered last night how these roommates come to be chicken owners, and it's a story I had to pass on because it says so much about the world these days (plus, it's the funniest chicken story I've ever heard, and that's saying something...)

Apparently Roommate #1 was driving down a fairly busy Austin street about three months ago when he saw a woman with a cell phone following a rooster down the sidewalk. R. #1 decided to pull over and chivalrously ask if she needed help. Wherein the woman explained that she'd come across the rooster (still heading east toward downtown) and was following it while dialing through her contact list on the hunt for a chicken savior. R. #1 offered to take the rooster. (I thought it'd be cool. And I have a backyard.)

Woman (concerned): Do you know anything about chickens?

R. #1 (totally lying): Of course!

Woman (who didn't own the rooster but somehow felt responsible for it according to the Societal Rules of Engagement circa 2010): Well...as long as you know what to do I guess it's OK.

Thus given permission, R #1 grabbed the rooster and tossed him in the backseat. Instant urban chicken owner.

Enter Roommate #2, girlfriend of R #1. Upon hearing that her boyfriend had picked up a rooster on the side of the road, she requested, calmly from all reports, that he build a coop, which he did. She then purchased three hens for company.

And if it all ended there, that'd be enough. But there's a coda to this story. A month later, after endless 4:30 a.m. wake-up calls, R #1 and #2 got rid of the rooster, but kept the chickens.

Me (eying their enormous lab/Great Dane mix): Umm...what did you do with the rooster?

R #1: I put him on craiglist for $5. He sold in about an hour to some lady who wanted him for breeding.

I love this story so much. In addition to the truly priceless images it evokes (rooster bobbing along the street, concerned citizen playing the part of mother hen at five paces back), it is such a charming example of freedom in action. Not the red-white-and-blue bluster we hear about from the bombasts, but daily-life freedom, the kind we don't usually think about but maybe should.

A widespread (often legit) criticism of American culture is that we have no culture at all. Instead, we are a collection of fragments: fragmented families where once extended clans lived in the same house; fragmented neighborhoods where we once knew everyone around us; fragmented values in this salad bowl of peoples and backgrounds; fragmented friendships conducted over Facebook rather than face to face. But this independence has also made us more flexible and open to the world around us. Rather than worrying what grandma or the Joneses will think (since grandma lives in Florida and we don't even know the name of the family next door), we can do things like follow a rooster down the public street or decide, in the amount of time it takes to pull over, that we'd maybe like to give that rooster a home. There's plenty of room in the backyard, after all, and no one around but a girlfriend, a roommate and a huge dog. It also makes it possible, even preferable, to interact with a cell-phone-toting stranger and negotiate the transfer of a rooster among equals, united only by their concern for the bird and uncomplicated by rigid class barriers, clan affiliation, ethnic strife or gender issues. For instance, in much of the world, this kind of interaction between a man and woman who were strangers would never happen.

Now, you can't market this story. You can't say, God bless America where a man can pick up a rooster off the street, claim him for a time, then sell him on craigslist. I'm cracking myself up just writing it. But it is still an "only in America" story, not just for its ridiculousness, but for the social fluidity of the whole thing, from the first SOS phone call from the rescue lady to R. #1's entree into chicken ownership to the craigslist-surfing new owner driving the rooster into the sunset.

Or maybe its just me...