My Fine Feathered Friend
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Boy Meets Bird.
Boy Gets Bird.
Boy Loses Bird
An Urban Folktale.
One day in the dead of winter, New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes looked out the window into his backyard in Queens and saw a chicken, jet black with a crimson comb. Wherever it had come from, it showed no sign of leaving, and it quickly made a place for itself among the society of resident stray cats. Before long, the chicken became the Chicken, and it began to arouse not only Grimes's protective impulses but also his curiosity. He discovered that chickens were domesticated first as fighters, not food; that egg-laying is triggered by exposure to light; that chickens were a fashion statement in Victorian days. He began to probe the mysteries of gallinaceous behavior, learning to distinguish a dust bath from a death dance and how to cater to his guest's eclectic palate. And when the Chicken began to repay his hospitality with five or six custom-laid eggs per week, Grimes had an answer to the age-old conundrum of which came first: the Chicken.
And then one day, obeying some bird-brained logic of its own -- or perhaps the victim of fowl play -- the Chicken vanished, leaving Grimes eggless but with this funny, enlightening, and heartwarming tale to tell.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The arrival of a particularly cheeky chicken in his Queens neighborhood gives New York Times food critic Grimes the impetus for this entertaining little book about the unusual visitor and all things fowl. The bird touches down in Grimes's backyard without warning, and the reaction of the animal-loving author and his wife turns from surprise to delight when the chicken makes a home among their family of cats, staking out its own patch of turf in their backyard and brazenly taking its place in the "cafeteria line" for cat food. Grimes deftly sprinkles historical background and anecdotes about chickens into his chronicle of the bird's behavior and the reaction of neighbors and colleagues. He muses on the small adjustments he made in his own lifestyle to accommodate the chicken as a pet, and offers subtle, compelling observations about the ancient relationships between animals and humans, which have their place even in the city. The bird's moment of fame is short-lived it vanishes as mysteriously as it came only a few days after Grimes begins writing about the chicken in his column. The moment is a sad one for Grimes and his wife, but the chicken's short hiatus in Queens will be a boon for readers who chuckle their way through this well-told tale, proving once again that a good writer can make a meaningful story out of anything.
