Just before leaving Arizona, I joined my sweetie on a short walk with his husky Blue. We followed the usual path, starting along the dirt road that leads from his house toward a field that lays open between two large, rocky outcroppings in the area of boulders around his home called the Granite Dells.
As we headed back toward the house, we saw something dash across the road in front of us, skirt up and over a boulder, and disappear.
“He’s alive!” I cried out, overjoyed. “I can’t believe it.”
“I thought I had heard him crow once this morning, but I didn’t want to say anything until I heard him a second time,” partner confided.
“But he didn’t crow again, so I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
We walked around the rock, and peered in. The rooster was right there and very much alive as only a chicken can be.
“I wonder if he has been hiding out,” my partner mused.
“Do you think the hens might be in there? Maybe, he is protecting them. That is a rooster’s job, you know.”
“I guess that sometimes, chickens live after all,” I said.
“For a little while.”
“Well, that is all any of us can hope for right?”
I felt happy and hopefuly as we headed back to the house. I have always anthropomorphized (given human characteristics) to animals, both stuffed and living, and I know that I have watched too many movies that do the same. Yet, I felt strangely proud of these chickens living out their lives according to their own design.
I can learn from these chickens. I can live by my own design, for a little while at least.
life of m 