Most people will never see chickens as anything more than the severed body parts they prefer to eat and the eggs they claim as their own. They can’t know these tiny descendants of dinosaurs as anything more than what they can take from them. I pity their blindness.

Kotori and Harumi have established a comfortable rhythm with us. With their physical needs all carefully attended to, they have the chance to be individuals. This is a chance their sisters, mothers and brothers caught up in the hell of animal agriculture will always be denied.

Kotori is a careful eater. She meticulously and forcefully addresses each morsel of food so there is no waste. Harumi
sweeps in, and food flies!

Kotori doesn’t get distracted by much. If she is eating, she eats; if she is drinking, she drinks, and so on. Harumi flits from eating to snuggling back to eating with a drink thrown in.

Kotori loves to snuggle on my lap though she doesn’t seem to crave it as Harumi does. She is satisfied with a pet to the head in passing while Harumi will interrupt what she is doing to seek my lap and my touch. Kotori has a quiet confidence while Harumi is much quicker to startle.

They are so much more than their body parts. They are so much more than the eggs they will produce. They are so much more than the cost of their care or my limited ability to fathom just who they are.

My mother said to me the other day, “I never thought I’d have a daughter who loves chickens!” and though this was meant to be slightly mocking, it struck me as a very beautiful thing.

Yes, I do love chickens, and I always will.

– Linda Nelson