The Death of a Chicken

It’s one of those situations you try to prepare yourself for. One of those scenarios you’ve run through your mind countless times, always wondering what would I do…
You come home from a long day of work and your neighbor is waiting for you at your front gate. Immediately you can see that she’s, not quite distressed, but emotional. She speaks audibly, but also with her hands, and she says that she needs her baby chicken, demonstrating its small size with her cupped palms. You don’t need to speak your confusion because it’s been a very long day, and the confusion bordering on annoyance is written all over your face. So she quickly explains that her chicken is within the walls of your back yard and she’s been scared to go back there because of the dogs, and now her whole body is telling the story, one arm flailing in the direction of the back yard, and the other hand cupping her worried chin. The gravity of the situation rushes to your head. You nod, calmly go inside, grab a flashlight and walk to the back door that lets into the yard.
So here I am standing over a sleeping chicken, no bigger than my cupped palms, with the spotlight of my high-powered headlamp illuminating one resting eye. I nudge the chicken with my foot, confirming my suspicion that it’s not going to wake up, not ever. It took me about three hopeful turns around my yard before I came upon the dead fellow. And now with my worried neighbor waiting on the other side, I sigh and continue to wonder what will I do, because a neighbor’s dead chicken on my property, with my already vilified dogs running excited circles around me, is no simple business.
You could easily hide the evidence. Down the latrine, into the trash pit, under the charcoal, and no one would ever be able to prove a thing. But people would start to talk, and you don’t want that. You could blame the chicken, because really it’s his own damn fault. But you reckon you shouldn’t speak ill about the dead. So you continue to stand over the peaceful body, wondering what to do, and thinking how these things always seem to come about at the end of a long day.
I walk back to my front gate with a small smile on my face. I do my best to make my smile less condescending and more understanding, but I can’t be sure how it comes across. You can’t find it, she asks. I assure her I found it, pause, and I come clean. Which sends my neighbor into a retrospective account of her past, and the chicken’s last, torturous hours. The disturbed noises coming from the trapped chick, and my neighbor peering through a crack in the wall, and a repeat of her fear, and the possibilities of how it happened, leaning towards MC Roger and Dama de Bling the dogs as the culprits, but not counting out mischievous Oliver Style the cat. I nod, with a smile that continues to exude understanding, but I’m still not sure what I’m expected to do. We stare past each other for several extended beats of sorrowful tentative silence, and then my saddened neighbor, head down and shoulders slumped, says she’s going home now, and turns mumbling softly to herself.
The morning brings new hope and the rejuvenation of noisy chickens throughout Mossuril. My neighbor’s own brood is frantically trying to keep up with their mother, and have apparently forgotten, or maybe moved past, the tragedy of their fallen sibling. You wonder if the case could be closed, finished, which would be almost too good to be true because you never did anything. And then you hear the murmurings, the telltale call of the gossipy women at the well. Gossipgossipgossipzachgossipgossipdoggossipgossipchicken. And you know that the case is not closed.
Lying in bed I know, as I’ve known all along, that there is only one thing to do. I walk over to my neighbors yard and ask licensa. She comes around from the back of her house with a tooth brushing stick coming out of her mouth and toothpaste flowing over her lips. Seeing me she quickly lifts the corner of her wrap-around skirt, wiping her face, and waits upon whatever I have to say. I ask after her health, and then gazing around fall upon her energetic band of chickens. I ask if she’s spoken with them, telling them that it’s probably best to not venture into my walled off yard. She doesn’t pick up on the joke, or maybe just doesn’t think it’s funny, and replies that she doesn’t talk to the chickens, and even if she did that they wouldn’t understand her. I nod, and hand her 50 meticais. She accepts the money (a little less than you would pay for a full grown chicken) with two hands, once again lifting the corner of her skirt, but this time to hide a huge grin and a slight giggle. Again I nod, wag my finger at the chickens, and turn towards my house. She is still smiling broadly, tucking the worn bill safely into a fold somewhere in the depths of her colorful clothing.