Page 28 - LIfesOuttakes4

A Chicken Named Fluff

I called her Fluff. How she got that name was purely

by accident. I don’t know where she came from or who
owned her, and nobody else seemed to either. One day she

just showed up in the barnyard and decided she was cock
of the walk. I guess she wasn’t cock of the walk, being a

female, she was hen of the pen, but she sure decided she
owned everything.
She would squawk and flap her wings and peck at

you if she didn’t like something you were doing. She was
red. Actually, she was kind of mottled, but she was mostly

red. She moved into one of the barns at the horse yards
where I took care of race horses while I was in graduate
school.

She was always busy, running here and there,
bossing anyone around she thought she could. Some of the

old timers that liked to hang around down there felt her
bossy ways were going to work her right into a stew pot,
but no one bothered her too much because she did add

another layer of interest to the already exciting life around
the barns.

The lady I worked for told me I could sprinkle a little
grain out for her if it wasn’t too much, and Fluff seemed to

tolerate me because of it.
But the day I named her, she didn’t seem to have any

tolerance for me at all. I had gone into the barn to get some
grain for the horses, and she flew at me, pecking,

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