Under the Henfluence by Tove Danovich

Author:Tove Danovich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agate Publishing

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* Not her real name.

CHAPTER EIGHT:

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR CHICKEN

JUST HOW SMART IS THE AVERAGE CHICKEN? CROWS CAN RECOGNIZE and remember faces of those who have wronged them, mourn, and solve complex tasks. Parrots can talk—Alex the gray parrot, who might have been a linguistic genius for his species, learned and could use over one hundred words and might have accomplished even more had he not died young. The male bowerbird is an artist. They create bowers, complicated structures made of sticks, rocks, and colorful found objects, in order to attract a female, who chooses her mate based entirely on how much she likes his aesthetic sensibility. I’ve seen many similar couplings at art school.

Chickens can’t mimic human speech. They don’t make art (unless you count rearranging their humans’ carefully tended gardens). If a chicken’s smarts come up in conversation, people are likely to recall the phrase “running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” which is a direct reference to one of the most famous chickens of the mid-1900s, Mike the headless chicken. This poor bird lived for eighteen months after a farmer’s ill-fated attempt to eat him for dinner—cutting off the bird’s head but somehow keeping part of the brain stem intact. His owner toured Mike around the U.S. as a sideshow attraction. The rooster was fed with a dropper that put food and water directly into his esophagus. The bird’s hometown of Fruita, Colorado, has held an annual festival in the rooster’s honor every year since 1999. This might be good PR for the city of Fruita, which has a Mike statue downtown, but it wasn’t great for the reputation of the chicken.

A reasonable person might extrapolate from the story that if Mike could do chicken things like scratch in the dirt and stay alive for almost two years without a head, there must not be a whole lot happening in a chicken’s noggin. But the chicken has been unfairly maligned. They may not be able to speak human language, but they make about thirty distinct sounds and calls and may even have special chickenese names for their owners.63 The average hen might not be able to solve a puzzle the way a crow can, but she can discriminate between different colors and shapes. She can be trained.

Many owners of backyard flocks have already trained their chickens in small accidental ways. When I come outside and the ladies hear the door shut, they start making their most annoying sounds, usually a squeaky screech or a honk that sounds like someone forgot to oil a goose. They know doors equal people, which equal treats. If it’s seven in the morning and the chickens are shrieking, I will go down and give them treats to shut them up. I wince every time. I know I’m teaching them that they’ll be fed delicious snacks if they’re loud, but we do have neighbors.

I whistle for the girls so they can find me when we’re on opposite ends of the half-acre yard.

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