My sister-in-law Gloriosa has got chickens.
Not chicken pox.
Chickens.
The things that go “cluck.”
I got to explain. Gloriosa believes sweat is good for her, so now, in July, she is running every morning. One day she staggers home, swills down some ice water, nods at her three kids who are jabbering about some TikTok thing, and heads upstairs.
She throws off her clothes and steps into the bathtub.
And there she finds a live chicken.
She yells some but the kids can’t hear her over whatever they are yelling about.
So she wraps up in a towel, picks up this chicken (actually a full-grown hen) in another towel, and stomps downstairs.
They all look at her. “How strange! A chicken in the house!” “My goodness, look at that!” Which tells her they are guilty as sin, like she didn’t already know.
“Well, I don’t know where she come from, but she’s going out,” Gloriosa growls, heading for the door.
“Noooo! Don’t put Hot Chick outside, Mama,” says the oldest, Rex. (His birth name is Comus, but he changed it.) “It’s too hot outside! She’d fry right there on the sidewalk.”
“‘Hot Chick,’ huh? She has a name?”
Muses (used to be Momus, but she’s changed it too…it’s a thing with kids now) says, “We found her in the driveway. She was sooo sad. We brought her into the air conditioning and she perked right up.”
All three kids stand around her, begging. Hot Chick looks sadly at her with one round eye, the other being on the other side of her head.
Gloriosa thinks about it.
She knows there are Uptown people raising chickens these days. It’s one of those weird trends, like the name-changing thing.
She carries Hot Chick back to the bathtub, takes a shower in a different bathroom, and calls me up.
Do I know where she can get a air conditioned chicken coop?
That’s a weird question to hear in the morning.
My daughter is looking at the TV and that Wayfair jingle comes on.
So I sing, “Wayfair, it’s got just what you need,” and head for the coffee pot.
She says, “Thanks!” And hangs up.
Well, it turns out, Wayfair does sell chicken coops. That’s the kind of world we live in today.
But they ain’t air conditioned. Finally, she calls one of her chicken-raising friends, who tells her to get a big box fan and set it up next to the coop. She also tells her she can’t keep just one hen. A hen needs a flock or she’ll get depressed, this chicken expert says.
Well, she don’t want a depressed hen.
So she drives to some feed and seed store in Jefferson and buys two more hens, which the kids name Big Freedia and Screech.
She also buys this elaborate coop (Proteus, her husband, refers to it as Cluckingham Palace) and sets it outside. Then they drag this big electric box fan out there and turn it on.
Anyway, their life with chickens is working out more or less okay until this really hot day when their house air conditioning goes kaput. So they drag the chickens’ fan up on the front porch (they bring the chickens up there too) and Gloriosa gets everybody sno-balls, and they all sit there and chill. It’s not so bad.
Then Gloriosa’s mother-in-law Ms. Sarcophaga marches up the walk. She lives next door, but they haven’t told her about the chickens yet. She ain’t into trends.
“Chickens,” she asks. “Is this the company they keep in Chalmette?” (She is always making mean remarks about the Parish.)
She happens to be wearing sandals to show off her bright red nail polish. Big Freedia mistakes her little toe for a ladybug. She pecks it.
Ms Sarcophaga lets out a shriek. “That cannibal chicken ruined my manicure!”
“Actually, a chicken would have to eat another chicken to be a cannibal,” Rex says.
But Ms. S is storming off to repair her manicure. She has a SOCIAL OCCASION with PEOPLE tonight.
“If I knew chickens would keep my mother-in-law away, I would have got them sooner,” Gloriosa says.
“Cluck!” Big Freedia says.