Sally Breslin: My Life: I STILL FONDLY REMEMBER MY MOST UNIQUE EASTER GIFT

I’m Eastern Orthodox, so my Easter was celebrated yesterday, the 8th of April. And just like every year, I found myself thinking about the unusual gift my Aunt Terry gave me for Easter back when I was only 10…a box that contained two live baby chicks.

What was unusual about them was they were color-dyed. One was bright pink and the other was bright green. I don’t think the procedure is done much, if at all, any more, but back then, in honor of Easter, chicks often were dyed bright colors while they still were embryos, by a procedure that involved injecting the dye into their shells.

Anyway, my aunt paid us a surprise visit with the two chicks for me, which she said were both females. I fell in love with them the minute I touched their fluffy little bodies and heard their enthusiastic peeping. My parents, however, cast my aunt evil glances that told me they were not even close to sharing my enthusiasm. For one thing, we lived in a small, four-room apartment in the middle of the city – not exactly an ideal place to raise chickens.

But my parents eventually gave in and let me keep the chicks, probably because they figured that if they turned out to be like all of the turtles, hamsters and guinea pigs I’d had in the past, their days pretty much were numbered.

I named my new pets Henny and Penny and kept them in a cardboard box near the furnace grate in my bedroom, to keep them warm. In just two days, Henny, the pink chick, died. Not only was I heartbroken, Penny also clearly was devastated to lose her bunkmate.

So I became Penny’s best friend and surrogate mother. She followed me everywhere around the house, peeping loudly as she ran to keep up with me (and, to my mother’s dismay, leaving a trail of droppings wherever she went).

Penny also sometimes acted like a cat, rubbing up against my legs whenever I was standing still.

I soon learned she preferred human food to her chicken feed. I was sitting on the sofa one day, watching TV while eating a bowl of Franco-American spaghetti. I had my legs stretched out in front of me, when Penny came running up them and onto my lap. She then attacked my bowl of spaghetti in the same fashion a robin would attack earthworms. From then on, I always shared my spaghetti with her.

All too soon, however, Penny began to lose her “cute baby chick” status and matured into a slender, elegant-looking chicken. White feathers replaced her green fuzz, although the feathers still had green tips on them, which gave her a unique look, as far as chickens went.

“Penny can’t stay in your room any longer,” my father finally said to me one day. “She’s not only getting too big, she’s smelling up the whole apartment. I’ve fixed up a pen for her down in the basement. She’ll have a lot more room to roam around down there.”

“The basement!” I was appalled. “That’s like sending her to the dungeon!”

“Well, it’s either that, or she’ll have to go to a farm somewhere,” my dad said. “I don’t have to tell you that an apartment in the city is not a good place to raise her.”

So Penny moved down to the basement. I didn’t want her to feel lonely or abandoned, so I spent a lot of time down there with her.

Then came the fateful morning that changed everything.

Everyone was sound asleep, and the sun was just beginning to rise, when suddenly, echoing up through all of the furnace grates came a loud, “ERR-ER-ERR-ER-ERR” sound.

I sat up in bed, my eyes wide.

“What on earth?” I heard my father mutter in the next room.

Again, and this time even louder, “ERR-ER-ERR-ER-ERR!”

I could hear the couple who lived in the apartment directly above us shouting, “What the (insert any four-letter word here) was that?!”

My father, half-asleep and in his robe, appeared in the doorway of my room.

“Guess what?” he said, frowning. “Penny is a ‘he,’ not a ‘she.’”

“So?” I asked, too much of a city slicker to understand what difference it made.

“Penny’s a rooster!” he explained. “And roosters crow at sunrise every morning and wake up everyone. I hate to say it, but Penny has to go.”

“Nooo!” I cried. “I don’t want her…him…to leave! Can’t we take him to the vet’s for an operation to keep him quiet? Can’t they remove his crower?”

“It’s time for Penny to be outside in the fresh air, out in the country with other chickens,” Dad said gently.

So the next day we drove Penny to my dad’s friend Matty’s place out in the middle of nowhere. Matty already had a bunch of other chickens running around in his big yard.

“I’ll take good care of him,” Matty assured me. But behind my back, I overheard him whisper to my father, “He’s a nice fat one. He’ll make good eating!”

For days afterwards, I was totally miserable. I also had nightmares about Penny lying headless and roasted on a platter on Matty’s dining-room table. I was so upset, I even vowed never to eat Franco-American spaghetti again.

That’s when Dad received a phone call from Matty.

“What kind of weird rooster did you bring me?” Matty asked him. “He thinks he’s a cat! He rubs up against my legs and cuddles against me. And when I’m out in the yard, he follows me everywhere! I can’t kill him – he’s too much of a pet!”

So Penny had a stay of execution. In fact, he lived a long and happy life with Matty and his family, and I visited him several times over the years.

But still, every year, even to this day, whenever Easter rolls around – or I see a can of spaghetti (or drive by a KFC)…I always think about my little green chick and all of the great times we shared.

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