THE HEN LAID THE EGG

THE HEN LAID THE EGG

“ Yes, Chicca is fine…oh, but sure, she eats regularly , with appetite…of course, she eats the birdseed you advised me….and she drinks….sure, I reminder she also needs the grass….oh, every day I let her go out in the garden “ While she was talking at the phone with her great-aunt Teresa, Matilde kept an eye on Chicca, which was hopping on the sofa , and she bent down from time to time to peck it, then, after a few pecks, she raised her head and looked here and there, craning her neck.

“ No, not for now….What do you say? Have I to worry?” Matilde asked, then she remained silent listening. “ Ah, I understand….but of course, I’ll let you know. See you soon , aunt” Matilde put down the phone and went to the sofa, to which Chicca, with a standing tail, was giving energetic pecks. “ But Chicca, darling, so  you’ll destroy the sofa. Matilde said. Chicca seemed to be answering her with a kind of muttering, or rather gurgling, but she kept on pecking the red cloth of the sofa. “ Oh, darling, you must find it appetizing, eh?” Matilde said in a joking and amused tone.

When, a few weeks earlier, Matilde had decided to take a hen as a pet (animal), she had thought of getting an ornamental hen, she had seen some very pretty ones , with incredible colorful plumage, beautiful crests, legs with a delicate shrub look, little delicate feet. It was her great-aunt Teresa to convinced Matilde that, instead an ornamental hen, which was not , her great-aunt couldn’t consider it  a real hen, but rather a parlor trinket, to take a real  hen, a hen which lay eggs, which was capable to hatch the eggs , from which the chicks would have hatched. Sure, it would have been more challenging to have a real hen instead of an ornamental hen in the house as a pet, but it would be worth it , great-aunt Teresa had said her ( assured her). “ Do you want to put what  a real hen can give you with what you can expect from A TOY HEN?” as she insisted on calling the ornamental hens, as if they were not real animals too.  And it was her great-aunt Teresa who had introduced her in the farm where Matilde had found Chicca, which she had loved at first sight. More than with her appearance, that great, white hen had conquered Matilde with….her eye, which looked at her  remaining fixed, motionless, but, at the same time, lighting up more and more as it stared at her.

Matilde had felt looked by the only one eye of the hen with joy, with glee. It was as if that look of one eye, that is the look of the hens and the other birds, told her that the white hen was very happy to see her, that she was waiting for her, that she was waiting….just her. It was as the hen said her: “ Oh, you, finally you!” Chicca was a beautiful true ( real) hen, with luxuriant white plumage, with strong legs and strong feet, like a real hen must have, since she needs to scratch in the ground, looking for earthworms and other little animals to eat, and  also looking for   pebbles which the hen swallows and which are equally necessary for her well-being, for her health. And strong Chicca had also her beak. Then, since her great-aunt had not forgotten that Matilde would have liked an ornamental hen, Chicca also had a very special feature that made her a rare specimen compared to the white hens of S. , like her. Chicca’s crest, high, thick, harmoniously scalloped , was red , like that of the other white hens of her breed, but in the top of the scallop it was yellow, a golden yellow, a characteristic for which Matilde called Chicca also Golden Crest, my Golden Crest. Chicca immediately turned out to be an enchanting company for Matilde , who lived alone and until then she had only had cats as pets. And even when Chicca arrived there was a cat in her house, Bartholomew, a big black cat , with magnificent green eyes, which was frowned up by Matilde’s neighbors, who claimed that when Bartholomew happened to cross their street, he brought bad luck. For this backbiting , but indeed for the widespread superstition it happened  that her cat was also beaten.

Of course Matilde had been also a little worried about how the cohabitation between Chicca and Bartholomew would go ( would have gone), since she did not even remotely think of reserving her animals ( pets) a limited space in her house, which was almost wide. No, as Bartholomew had always been free to go anywhere, so she would have let it be for Chicca too. Then, if anything, if the two animals did not get along, she would have thought of a division of the spaces to be reserved to each of them.

Matilde had expected  that in the cohabitation of the two animals , it would be ( would have been) Chicca which would have had more difficulties, since her cat, of big size, was a terrible hunter of birds, not only little birds, but he also hunted pigeons with great ease. And Chicca, after all, she was a bird, too, so that Matilde had even feared that the hen could run the risk of being chased by Bartholomew. Instead, and it was a great surprise for her, when Chicca arrived (came) in the house , he was, Bartholomew to be disoriented, worried, if not even frightened. As Chicca approached him, the cat ran away, going to hole up somewhere as under the bed, or in a drawer . He had even slipped into the sink of the washing machine to escape the hen. It was delightful, albeit distressing, to see Chicca which, chest out, neck erect, turning her head now on a side, now on the other, with a sustained step approached Bartholomew, making that noise ___it was her voice__which was a kind of hum. And Bartholomew, flattened himself, with his tail low, ran off , all trembling. “ Oh, Bartholomew, what a fool you are! “ Matilde said to him. “ She is a hen! She doesn’t eat you!” Matilda had also doubted that Chicca might have given  her cat some pecks , but then she had to realize that what frightened Bartholomew was not any blows of the beak received by Chicca, but it was the voice, the verse a little muttering which the hen made.

Then Matilde, patiently, had spoken, that is, she had tried to make herself understood, not only by using words, both to Chicca and to Bartholomew. She had tried to reassure her cat that the cry of Chicca was nothing to be afraid of, and at the same time she had tried to make Chicca understand that her muttering cry frightened the cat. She had talked to them lovely, smoothing them both, and she finally managed to improve the situation. Bartholomew seemed to have still some awe of Chicca, but he no more ran away when the hen approached him. Not that, at least for now, Matilde happened to see Bartholomew walking, side to side with Chicca, talking__so she said__, like she saw often her cat did with other cats, but at least her two beloved animals could both stay in the same room quietly, at peace with each other.

Chicca was delightful to watch, and to listen to. The jerky movements with which she turned her head, her steps, her way of moving, which smacked of hasty, rustic, yet , at the same time, were of an essential, enchanting elegance.  It was a joy, a real pleasure, to see her to brush off, swell her feathers and then shake them all, that you  heard them rustle lightly.  Chicca had feathers which looked like silk to touch them.  Her verses, her warbling, her bellows, as she called them, gave Matilde the impression that the hen was talking to her, that Chicca wanted to tell her something which had happened while she there was not there.

There was only a thing that worried Matilde, and also her great aunt Teresa, who she kept informed about Chicca from day to day.  Chicca had never laid an egg , since she was at her house, although at the farm where Matilde had bought her, they had assured that the hen was laying eggs , not exactly every day, but every two, three days she regularly did egg.

Matilde no more hoped her beautiful white hen would ever laid an egg, when one day, at all unexpectedly, a shrill clatter announced that Chicca had laid the egg. It was an incredibly big egg, and from that big white egg here that a yellow chick, yellow as the finishing of the crest of Chicca, came out.