Like the First Morning

Nathaniel Jao and Chicken Little

Well, of course a kid is likely to get excited, spotting his first chicken! The chicken is older than he, by several years. We first found the ceramic biped in Nogales, Sonora, probably about fifteen years ago, during an earlier time in Tucson.

Since then, the chicken, together with an attendant brood of baby chicks, have moved to Minnesota, and back again, to Tucson.

This morning, this cool but luscious morning, Nathaniel, as usual, pointed out that there were interesting and unexplored things outside, and that he should see them. I got him turned wrong, so that he could not ride the chicken, as he had intended, but we have time. Chicken Little is impassive; close enough to patience! She has been through sleet and snow: a kid is just an eye-poking bother.

Our old cat, Annie, on her first and obviously last trip to Tucson, is a bit miffed because, although she has been an indoor cat for as long as we have had her--about ten years--she had been permitted short and exilhirating excursions out onto the deck, or the front lawn, in Minnesota. Here we have no deck, nor any lawns. We do have critters who consider even a scrawny house cat, long since past her prime (too), a possible delicacy, so she stays indoors and complains.

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