dinosaur on the doorstep
Though frequently labeled birdbrains, chickens reportedly possess intelligence on par with dogs and dolphins, elephants and chimpanzees. They understand patterns, oft-repeated words, and can recognize up to one-hundred faces, human and animal alike. They are problem-solvers, empaths, and are capable of grasping concepts like object permanence that our own infant offspring cannot. Over the past three weeks, Freida Lay has demonstrated a level of resourcefulness that officially quashed any doubts pertaining to the veracity of these claims. She is one smart chicken. That she is still alive has proven it.
For several days we waited out a blizzard warning, emergency supplies at the ready. Gently, the snow fell, but the blizzard never came, not to our area anyway, only to the higher mountain peaks and passes. Freida either cannot or will not walk through the chilly depths. Last time it snowed, our hen restricted her movements to our front porch, roosting in a pot of wilted daisies until the white stuff had melted away. This time she didn't show, presumably unable to traverse the yard to get there. Somehow, someplace, she kept herself fed and out of the frosted yard until the rain returned and cleared the way.
As soon as we'd averted one emergency, another descended. For four days and nights, temperatures plummeted to record lows, winds ripped through the trees at destructive velocities. Bundled into virtually immobilizing layers, Dennie and I woke to mornings of twelve below, an improvement over reported overnight windchills of -20 degrees Fahrenheit with gusts to 55mph. Even the extreme foul weather did not convince our own finicky fowl to step foot into the shelter we'd provided. We don't know where she hid, how she protected herself from frostbite, from hypothermia, but after the first brutal night, then the second, she appeared in the yard, approaching us on sight, clucking for her breakfast. It was only on the fourth day, after a calmer yet still icy night, that we could not find her. Separately, we each searched the property, peering into any nook and cranny where our hen may have tucked herself away, worrying, wondering, fearing the worst. No pleading red eyes. No orange and white spotted feathers. We uncovered not a single trace of her. It wasn't until lunch that, with great relief, Dennie spied the bouncing white plumes of a familiar tail as our chicken cavalierly pecked her way along the perimeter of the property, oblivious to the anxiety her absence had caused. The two of us scrambled for scrambled eggs to warm our chicken's belly with nourishing protein. Freida just had to make it through one more subzero night, and, after the far more frigid ones she'd already faced, at last, we had every reason to believe she'd survive.
The weather could have returned to normal--for January--but, all over the country, Winter Storm Indigo had other ideas. Locally, it was as if we'd jumped off of the iceberg and into the glacier. Temperatures may have risen into the teens and twenties, but in one night, over a foot of snow had accumulated. The next morning--the next two days--it continued to cascade from the skies. Where was Freida? Was she snowbound and trapped? Would she find food? The question should have been, what can't this clever girl figure out? Freida, it seems, has now taken up residence on our back deck, not in the bedding-outfitted box provided as a secondary shelter, should she need it, but wherever it pleases her. She roosts on the deck chairs. She shields herself from the elements between furnishings up against the siding. And she sleeps perched atop a shipping box Dennie had meant to cut down for recycle day. It was apparently good fortune that she hadn't gotten around to it.
This week, we remain snowed in, us in our cottage, heated only by winter woolies and the flames crackling within the wood stove, Freida on the back deck, protected by her own wits and cunning, along with ample helpings of seed and specially prepared eggs. When she is hungry, she comes to the door, waiting on the mat for her loyal servants to emerge. She knows our faces, ours and Maisie's alike. She talks and indicates basic comprehension when we talk to her. She is confident we won't harm her. Most importantly, under the most adverse conditions, she is clearly well equipped to keep herself alive--as well as, if not better than, any human could manage under similar strain.
Like the often underestimated chicken, recent studies show the bully of the Cretaceous Period, the Tyrannosaurus rex, was at least as intelligent as baboons and other present-day primates, able to not only survive and conquer in the moment but to plan for the future. (Obviously not enough to take up astronomy and build underground anti-asteroid bunkers, but still...) Coincidentally, the proteins found in Rex’s DNA are—of all the living things on Earth—most similar to the contemporary chicken.
Think of these two theropods as third cousins—a hundred million years removed. Then imagine welcoming a modern Tyrannosaurus to make itself at home right outside your bedroom window. Strip away a mere hundred-thousand millennia of evolution, and, as Freida slumbers peacefully upon her box, we'd be hailed The Bravest Family in All of the Pacific Northwest.
Yeah. Either that...or Dinner.
Nice Freida. Good Freida. Friends.