Lost in the Wild

185th street in Manhattan is pretty far uptown. It isn’t, however, so far uptown that there is grass or wildlife. Mostly, there is cement, a few cars, a bunch of people in buildings, and sometimes my mother, who works at a school on that street. Yesterday, however, there was also a chicken.

My mother was walking toward the train after finishing work and came across a baby chicken (but I’m assured it was not a chick, it was a small chicken) walking down the street. It came to my mother’s attention as two men walked by it commenting, “wow, you rarely see a baby pigeon these days.” That may be true. It is especially rare to see baby pigeons that are the size of a full grown pigeon, as this chicken was. Those are hard to find since you can’t be both a baby pigeon and a full grown pigeon at the same time. Fortunately my mother was coming from an elementary school, where knowledge of farm animals is rudimentary, and she was able to immediately recognize the bird as a chicken and not a pigeon. The chicken was not walking across the street, so there was no potential for telling the chicken a joke. Instead, my mother decided to save the chicken.

After thinking about it, her first course of action was to call 311, the city information number. They were baffled as to what to do with a rogue chicken in the street, and told her to call the EPA. Yes, naturally, the Environmental Protection Agency would be the appropriate office to call concerning a lost chicken. She was on her way to thinking of a plan B, which was going to involve calling 911, when a friend walked up and offered to wait with the chicken while my mother went to the local police precinct on 186th street and asked them to handle the situation. The man at the dispatcher station said he would send a squad car over (we’re pretty sure he was mocking her). Returning to the chicken and her friend, my mother informed them that she had been mocked by the police and her friend suggested that they put the chicken in a box and bring it to the police so that the officers would believe them. Going into a Staples nearby, her friend returned with a cardboard box, which they were then unable to coax the chicken into. Being a practical person, her friend decided to bite the bullet and pick the chicken up and place it in the box, which she did. My mother commented that at this point, the chicken seemed much happier. They then carted it to the police state, which they found a sympathetic officer as the police dispatcher desk hid his face. And so, my mother saved a chicken. What did you do yesterday?

By the way, this above image was found at a website that discusses tickling chickens. Obviously we are too highminded in this family to do such a thing with our poultry, but for those of you who are interested, here is the link.