FN Blog - Seven heads are better than one!

I come from a family whose idea of fun can get a little strange, so if you were to ask me about the silliest thing I’ve ever done, my family would probably be involved. I can think of at least a dozen incidents, like the Rat-Hunting Year or that time my dad had a spider living in his moustache. But in terms of pure silliness, nothing will ever beat the Great Chicken Chase.

One day my dad came home with a gift from a friend. A gift in the form of a brown native chicken, meant to be slaughtered and eaten at the soonest possible convenience. Over our dead bodies! My twin brother and I adopted her as a pet, and I christened her Carla Chickenini. (I swear to God I didn’t know what her last name meant, at the tender age of 12. It just sounded nice and vaguely Italian.)

She was a tough little broad, for a chicken, but patient enough with us to let us carry her around and pet her, and even allow us to stuff her head under her wing to make her sleep (I had read in a book that you can do that to chickens. Try it sometime!) She would even lay eggs from time to time, pretty tan eggs we’d discover in hidden places. I remember that my sister wouldn’t eat them because they were a disgusting shade of brown and not grocery-egg white. But they were Carla’s eggs, and they tasted fine to us.

Carla was usually kept leashed, with a piece of string tied around her leg. However, she’d get these nasty bumpy calluses where the string would rub her leg, or sometimes even get tangled in the string- hanging from her leg upside down and clucking resignedly until someone came to rescue her. So we let her run free.

She was never attacked or hurt by stray cats, and one day I found the reason why. We had a bunch of puppies this one time, and upon seeing Carla they immediately rushed at her. Carla hopped up on a low bench and stared intently at their faces for a second, then began pecking at their eyes. They left her alone after that, as I’m sure a lot of other would-be attackers did.

She had free run of the neighborhood, though I can’t be sure how far and wide her territory reached. She hung out in the garden mostly, and one time we saw her lying on her side in a patch of sun. We thought she was hurt, but she wasn’t…she was sunbathing! Picture this: a chicken lying on her side like a model, legs crossed, head cocked up slightly, while two kids circled her, snapping away with imaginary cameras while yelling “Yeah, baby, yeah! You’re gorgeous baby! Tilt that wing a little more…perfect!”

I think having free reign of the neighborhood, and no little chicks to look after, made her a stronger and more street-wise chicken. We’d see her sometimes fly up to perch on a surprisingly high wall, and we joked that soon we’d see her flying past a window like a real bird, she’d gotten so strong. One weekend at lunchtime my family got to discussing her, and we decided that it would be better if she were tied up again, for her safety, masyado na siyang gumagala. But, who was going to catch her? Heck, we all would!

And so it began. My mom and dad, my two older brothers and sister, me and my twin brother, and an assortment of maids and drivers decided to Capture Carla. We armed ourselves with plastic laundry hampers, sheets, even large plastic bags, and marched out the door. We circled the house slowly ‘til we spotted her. Then suddenly, there she was! “Get her!!!”

Poor Carla must have been bewildered to see this little army of about a dozen people, driven by some kind of temporary insanity, brandishing hampers and sheets, bearing down on her. She ran down the street. We followed, whooping and yelling. We chased her up and down the street, into neighbor’s gardens and garages, and finally into our next door neighbor’s house, sheets and bags flying behind us. “We have to get our chicken!” we yelled, and burst into their gates, while they looked on in utter astonishment. We finally cornered her in our neighbor’s dirty kitchen, and brought her home in a little victory parade. We tied up her leg, and left her and her rapidly pounding chicken heart to calm down on her perch.

Meanwhile, we were in the aftermath of our victory. We put away the hampers and sheets, and settled down into the weekend afternoon with the newspapers and TV. Temporary insanity? Family bonding time? An act of random silliness? All the same to us. Just another day in the life of the Ranada Family, and I wouldn’t (or just plain couldn’t) have it any other way.