When being curious is simply right for a good, normal chicken
Even when you have the wrong conclusions in your head, there’s always room for more curiosity until you figure it all out!
As you may remember, Pearl was plagued by not being “a good normal chicken” when she joined the other chickens in the flock. She endured a great deal of criticism and pecking just for being herself. Without Blanche as the anchor of her life or the fireflies as her nightly visiting friends, Pearl grew restlessly curious until she met The Bottle Cap Lady, someone with a sadder life than her own, just as Amelia had met Big Willie in the last chapter who was also someone with a sadder life than her own.
This chapter lets The Bottle Cap Lady explain Christmas, Church, and Christ as best she can and from her own perspective—her words are not what one would find in a more traditional telling. It also lets us see how life events can shape so much of our way of looking at things. If you have read our book How to Explain Christmas to Chickens, you will likely notice some borrowing of text.
When the season of fireflies ended, Pearl felt her world getting smaller. She had been by herself for so long.
One late autumn day, while I was raking leaves, Pearl watched intently, pacing back and forth to see if I raked up anything she might want. While doing all of that pacing, she discovered a little gap in the fencing of her run area. She looked at it. She saw me looking at her looking at it but did not say anything, knowing I would fix it if she did. I went back to my raking.
Pearl decided she had to remember the little gap. Maybe Blanche had only been playing Who Can Stay Still The Longest? with her. Perhaps she had already found the little gap and was out exploring the world or playing Hide And Seek.
“When are we going to put out The Big Blue Hippopotamus?” she asked. “And the other decorations? I will be glad to help you. The songbirds told me about them. They said we must have some like the other people are putting out because we don’t have a hippopotamus in our backyard like we had chickens in the backyard at Easter. Once we have them all put out, then possibly you can find time to explain Christmas to me. The songbirds couldn’t.”
“Pearl, we don’t need to have decorations to celebrate Christmas either,” I said because I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“I will need to find out more about The Big Blue Hippopotamus and this thing called Christmas.”
“Yes, of course,” I said and went back to raking leaves. Along with forgetting about the gap in Pearl’s fencing, I had also forgotten how unstoppably curious Pearl could be. She truly had a “heaping helping” of chicken curiosity.
Pearl began slipping through the little gap in her fencing to explore. She would hide under the bushes in front of the house and study what she could see of the decorations and colorful lights in the front yards along our street. Occasionally, she stayed out all night long without me ever knowing it. The days were shorter. It was still dark when I left for work and dark when I got home. In the mornings, I thought she was laying an egg in her nesting box. In the evenings, I thought she had gone up to roost.
Then one night she noticed tiny golden-white lights flashing on and off in a pattern a few houses away from ours. She was almost sure they were her firefly friends from the summer, but she would have to leave our yard to get a better look. It would be nice to see her old friends again.
The next day, Pearl made a Reindeer Antlers Hat to wear and disguise herself as a Christmas decoration. If anyone came along, she would play Who Can Stay Still The Longest? until they passed by. As soon as it became dark enough, she quickly headed for the yard with the most lights. Surely, whoever lived in that house had to know the most about Christmas.
When Pearl reached the flashing lights, she was amazed. They were not fireflies at all. They were strings of lights similar to the ones for her comedy show, but there were many dozens of them with more sizes and colors than she could have ever imagined.
And there were decorations everywhere! They were all arranged as if they were telling stories. Most were old like the things she collected on Trash Truck Tuesdays, but under the lights, they looked spectacular. Surely, someone as special as Blanche had to be in such a wondrous place.
Pearl wandered slowly through the decorations, trying to figure out what stories they were telling. She found a plywood cutout of The Big Blue Hippopotamus. It wasn’t new or made of plastic like the one next door to our house, but this one had pink toenails, just like Pearl had when she performed in her real comedy show so long ago. This was an excellent sign. Blanche had to be somewhere close by.
Just as Pearl opened her beak wide to call out for Blanche, the front door opened. Someone stepped out onto the porch and sat in a rocking chair. It was The Bottle Cap Lady, and she smelled like cookies.
Pearl knew what she had to do. Surely, The Bottle Cap Lady could tell her about Christmas. She might even tell her where Blanche was, or at least help find her.
Pearl adjusted her Reindeer Antlers Hat. Then she hurried up the front sidewalk, stood politely at the bottom of the porch steps, and waited.
When The Bottle Cap Lady noticed her, Pearl clucked and bwawked cheerfully and then motioned with her wing toward the most colorful group of decorations.
The Bottle Cap Lady did not understand, but Pearl would not give up. She started pecking around the decorations one at a time.
Pearl was careful not to damage or knock over anything, and finally, she pecked around the plastic nativity scene. It was the only one on the whole block, and so it didn’t seem particularly important. Pearl liked it, though. The stable was shaped a little like Pearl’s coop, and there was a kind of nesting box with straw. There was no chicken or egg in it, just a little baby. He had outstretched hands which always means food to any chicken, especially to Blanche who liked to eat.
Maybe Christmas was about The Little Baby With Outstretched Hands feeding everybody in the entire world. That would certainly be something worth celebrating.
Pearl must have finally stumbled onto a real clue because at last The Bottle Cap Lady said, “You want to know about Christmas, don’t you, little sweetie?”
Pearl stopped pecking, gave her best smile, and went back to the front porch steps. So, The Bottle Cap Lady moved her rocking chair closer and began to tell Pearl about Christmas.
“I ain’t nothing,” she said. “I’m just an old nobody on my way to nowhere with nothing.” The Bottle Cap Lady thought this was as good a place as any to start, and what would a chicken be able to understand anyway? She didn’t know that Pearl, like all chickens, could understand perfectly what was said to them.
“Plenty of people might wonder why I drag out all this junk every year. They see the ragged decorations with burned-out bulbs and old, faded plastic stuff nobody else would ever want. They see the homemade plywood decorations and the different strings of lights that don’t match. But this, this is like my church out here on my front porch. My church.
“You probably don’t know anything about church now, do you? Well, there’s something you and I have in common! They wouldn’t want either one of us in there. Me, I smell like old pop bottles. You, little sweetie, well, you smell like a chicken!”
The Bottle Cap Lady and Pearl laughed together. For a moment, The Bottle Cap Lady thought maybe this little white hen with the silly hat might know exactly what she was saying. But that would take a miracle, and The Bottle Cap Lady was sure there were no more miracles left in her life.
“I don’t know what it is, but when all of these lights are glowing, it just makes me feel good. If you watch them long enough they might make you feel good too. Every so often, I will stay out here the whole night just looking at everything.
“People don’t bother you at night. They don’t stare at you or talk about you when they think you can’t hear them at night. They don’t tell you what you ought to do. Or ought not to do.
“These Christmas lights are just about my only friends.”
She pointed to the empty roof of the nativity scene stable. “It used to have an angel up on the top there, but when it lost its halo, I took it down and put it with the others. It’s not The Christmas Angel if it doesn't have a halo. You know, with them white feathers, you’re a little like an angel yourself.”
There was a long silence. Pearl tilted her head to listen more carefully and waited for what The Bottle Cap Lady would tell her next.
“My baby, my Judy Lynne, she was The Christmas Angel in the Christmas pageant a long time ago, the last one I ever went to. The Christmas Angel is the only angel of all the angels up there with words to recite. Everyone said she was the prettiest angel they ever had.
I truly wish I could see her in that Christmas pageant just one more time. It’s not easy being without someone you love, and I sewed up and made her costume by myself. She was as pretty as a real angel.”
Pearl had seen the plastic angels in the yard. An angel must have a body like a little girl and wings like a chicken.
The Bottle Cap Lady’s wish was just like Pearl’s own wish. She just wanted to see Blanche once more.
“You know what? Every so often, the ugliest people have the prettiest little babies. At least that’s how it worked out with my baby, my Judy Lynne.
“You’re so pretty, and you don’t got any babies, do you? You’d be a good little Chicken Momma. I just know you would. Some of us girls just ain’t meant to be mommas, and some of us is meant to be mommas for only a little while. Bless them that’s meant to be mommas until the day they die.”
She looked back up at the empty roof of the nativity scene’s stable and back down at Pearl.
“You’d better get home now. He’s going to wonder where you are if you’re not home.”
Pearl flapped her wings and did a few dance steps to show her gratitude. Then she hurried away with a new, unexplainable joy in her heart.
Until Next Week…
In the next chapter, we return to looking at what is happening with Amelia as a captive in Professor Accipiter’s Blue Moon Circus where she begins to formulate and work on a plan of escape for herself and the other birds who are forced to perform for meaningless amusement.
If there is a lesson here that both Amelia and Pearl have to teach us its simply this:
When you are at your lowest point and things feel as if your life can’t become any worse, don’t take a dust bath in tragedy. Help someone else up and that will bring triumph to both of you!
Before we go, remember how the Raven With Blue Eyes had told Amelia that she learned to trust others. Her escape plan will definitely depend on trusting others as you will see next week!
We have a fairly simple poll question this week. We also publish this same content as a newsletter through Medium. Recently, we received a concerning comment from a Medium reader who felt that the amount of reading time was too long. Previously when we did our newsletter through Revue by Twitter (Revue has since been closed down and made non-existent), a reader, when asked if the Revue newsletter was too long, had commented that the length was not a problem because she could always come back to it later, reading as she had time and was able. What are your thoughts?
We have switched to just one chapter a week, but we had started this current project sharing two chapters a week. Was that too much? What works best for you, our newsletter readers? What is your preference? Votes and comments are appreciated! We always say we listen to our readers and depend on our readers, but it seems unbalanced to do what works best for what only one reader has said even though Medium is a platform that pays writers when readers read. Chickens gotta eat!
Thank you for reading!
John, Gracie, Bessie, Blanche, Pearl, Emily, and Amelia
"I'm just an old nobody on my way to nowhere with nothing."
I feel like that when I get depressed, even though there's no truth to it...yet.