Amelia Egghart

The promise of a storm hung hot and heavy over Yavapai county in Northern Arizona. Being mid-August, they were well into monsoon season. Locals knew to take care of their outdoor activities in the morning, and to seek shelter for the couple of hours that rain, lightening and thunder took center stage. Those in the know would finish their hikes by noon, shaking their heads at the shiny tourists bounding out onto trails that within an hour could be buried under flash flood waters, or illuminated with a light show that made the Disney parade look like a candle-light vigil. 

Over in Skull Valley, down at the Painted Lady ranch - named for the orange and black butterfly often found nestled within the globemallows growing around the ranch - even the chickens prepared themselves as they felt the air start to crackle with anticipation of the coming storm. The girls crowded themselves into one corner of their spacious coop, unusually quiet as the first fat drops fell from the sky. Well, all the girls, except for the one known as Amelia Egghart. Amelia always felt safest standing in the coop water dish. As soon as the first drop hit her head, Amelia would hustle over to the water dish, flap her wings frantically to get airborne enough to clear the edge and then gracefully splash down into the metal bowl where she would stare up into the roiling black clouds. 

Usually, although ill-advised, her strategy worked and she weathered the afternoon storms, none worse for the wear. Today, however, would be different. At the edge of their enclosed scratching area stood a middle-aged alligator juniper. The tree had been there long before the ranch. The ladies who built the ranch found its placement a little awkward, but chose to lovingly embrace the tree, knowing first hand how it felt to not quite fit in. As it turned out, the tree made a lovely outdoor learning area where the ladies would lead their three children through their school lessons. Up to this point, the tree had absorbed about three and a half centuries of weather, climate, star, and indigenous peoples’ data, the information stored deep within its heartwood. The math, science, history, and language lessons intended for the children, settled into the tree’s sapwood and finally, the life lessons, those taught through experience, love, and loss, coursed alongside the nutrients in its cambium layer. This alligator juniper was no more special than any other tree, for all trees have this ability. However, on this day at exactly 3:33pm a bolt of lightening struck this alligator juniper delivering 300 million volts of electricity through a system not designed for that. The alligator juniper is a very tough tree, evolutionarily designed to thrive in the brutal high deserts of Arizona. The tree would carry a thick black scar for the rest of its life, but it would survive. The bolt passed quickly through the tree and instantly spread, like a spicy blanket, over the ground. The hens, still huddled together in the coop, cried out at the large thunderclap and crowded even closer together. Amelia, still standing hock high in the metal water dish, received a tendril of the bolt that had just passed through the alligator juniper. Pain, confusion, and fear unlike anything she had experienced before, shot through her body, claw to comb, before everything went dark.

Luckily Amelia’s head had flopped over the side of the water dish, so even though she was found floating in the bowl, she didn’t drown. She awoke, wrapped in a towel, nestled in the arms of one of the ladies who was cooing softly to her, as had happened on several occasions after a scary event. Except this time Amelia could understand every word the woman said. Amelia whipped her head around to stare at the woman as she spoke. “Oooh, poor little dumb fluffy-butt, Amelia Egghart. Did you almost drown yourself again, silly bird-brain? Sweet baby, I’m glad you’re ok, but you must have been chasing dogwood fluff the day they gave out brains, poor little beautiful baby.” Amelia was shocked and horrified at the slander pouring from this woman’s mouth, a woman whom she just realized that she loved. Amelia’s chest started to heave with sobs of rage and embarrassment as she struggled to release herself from this cruel woman’s grasp. “Yikes! Hold on, hold on! Mother clucker, would you just wait a second?! Let me get this towel off you and I’ll put you down! Geez, ok be free Attila the Hen!” The woman finally released Amelia who shot straight over to hide in the shade of the newly singed alligator juniper. 

After calming down, Amelia stared up into the branches and sifted through what she knew to be true: She could now understand English. She also knew English was a language, one of many, that humans invented to communicate. She knew that even though she understood English, she would never speak it, damn constraints of the common chicken anatomy. She knew that if she had hands instead of claws that she could write, draw, knit, and even “flip the bird.” She knew that trees silently collected information and data to store within their many layers. She also understood the irony of how humans would cut down trees and process them into paper, onto which they would then record the exact same information. Amelia was able to reason that the lightening bolt had something to do with the transfer of knowledge from this alligator juniper to her tiny chicken brain. She was very aware of the constraints of her knowledge, as this tree had only been able to absorb one language fully, a sprinkling of a few others, depending on the whims of the children, and an education equalling to about the eighth grade of a common North American child. She knew that her new knowledge and reasoning powers, though average for a young human, would classify her as a chicken with unprecedented brilliance, on par with fictional super heroes: The very first “Super Chicken,” if you will. The thought made Amelia chuckle, but she sobered quickly wondering what could be done with her new power. 

The first thing Amelia did with her new powers of reason was to become fully vegetarian. Before the lightening bolt, Amelia would happily scratch the dirt with the other girls, digging up juicy grubs and crunchy hard-shelled beetles. However, Amelia now understood the terror and pain each insect experienced shortly before it died to fill her belly. She asked herself how, now that she understood the pain and fear of these animals, could she continue this barbaric practice? Wouldn’t that make her a monster? She knew the farm ladies consumed meat and felt her love for them grow complicated. Maybe if she had knowledge past the eighth grade she would understand.  

Over the next week Amelia hovered as close as she dared to the farm ladies, listening to every word they uttered. She heard them discuss mundane farm comings and goings, worries about money, updates about (now grown and moved out) children, and gossip about their neighbors. She felt nostalgic for the homeschool lessons that she had never attended, marveling at how she could miss something she had never experienced. At the beginning of the week Amelia devoutly pecked at her grain feed, carefully eating around any insects that meandered into her path. By the end of the week the mere sight of a juicy grub could cause her stomach to rumble and she found herself being a little less careful about what ended up in her gizzard. Her love for the ladies became less complicated. 

Amelia decided that she must alert the ladies to her newly acquired genius. Several years ago the children had taken turns reading Charlotte’s Web aloud under the juniper, and now the story held great significance to Amelia, having watched several hens unceremoniously taken to the barn, never to return. If the ladies knew of her genius, of course they would elevate her to “friend” or “mentor,” but even “pet” would do. Amelia enacted her plan early the next morning by scratching, “I am smart!” into the dirt directly in front of the door the ladies would come through to tend to the animals. She then placed herself above her message and waited. The lady who always wore purple emerged first, stepping directly onto the message without noticing it while saying, “Good morning little poop maker, did you happen to make any eggs today or will it just be more poop from you?” Amelia was horrified, but not deterred. Maybe if she saw her writing the message. The purple lady had gathered up all the water dishes and was cleaning and filling them at the well pump. Amelia placed herself directly in her line of sight and started raking her claws across the dirt to re-create her declaration. The purple lady paused to stare at Amelia. She then narrowed her eyes and asked Amelia, “Are you feeling ok, or did that lightening storm scramble more than your eggs?” Amelia clucked in frustration. She needed a better plan. 

Several days later, while working in the the vegetable garden, the lady that never wore purple exclaimed, “Where in tarnation did my shears go?” This was Amelia’s chance. She sprinted over while flapping her wings hoping it would make her faster. She had seen the anything-but-purple lady lay the shears down by the tomato plants and was determined to get there first. She rounded the corner of the raised vegetable bed a little too fast, tripped on an exposed root and did a barrel roll, finally coming to rest when she struck a tomato cage. She did end up next to the shears, but was a little too dizzy to make the dignified presentation she had planned. The no-purple lady gaped at poor Amelia and said, “Oh Clucker Carlson, you may think that you’re delivering the news, but as usual, that was just hogwash!” Amelia hopped to her feet, shook her feathers in a way that she hoped was dignified and stepped once to her left to stand on the shears. “Oh! My shears! Thank Gaea I found those!” Amelia’s beak dropped open. She found them? Did she honestly think that Amelia had almost broken her cloaca for fun? Why was proving her genius so difficult? 

Over the next week Amelia divided her time between the two ladies as they worked the farm. She tried to scratch out messages as well as drawings for the ladies, but sadly came to the realization that “chicken scratch” was not just a saying. Amelia started to stage opportunities to “find” missing equipment that she had in fact just hidden herself since both ladies rarely misplaced their tools. She found it was easiest to either push hay or an empty water dish over a tool where it lay due to her lack of both strength and thumbs. The ladies caught her in the act on several occasions, but it was the sting of the nickname, “Bonnie and Cluck” that finally made her give up that ruse. Amelia felt most aggrieved that the nickname was stupid; she was a solitary thief not a duo. “Clutch Cassidy” would have at least been accurate, if not funny.

Amelia’s frustration with the ladies was nothing compared to her frustration with her fellow animals. The donkey did not care if she was distracted reading the warning label on a bag a fertilizer and would have happily stomped her to death had she not frantically flapped out of his way at the last second. The horse couldn’t care less that she was trying to organize the other hens into efficient laying quadrants, and would have blithely dumped a steaming load directly over her head, had she not noticed the telltale lifting of his tail. And oh, the hens! Amelia felt downright despondent when thinking about the girls. They were just so very stupid. She knew that they could tell that she was acting different, unfortunately their instincts led them to attack her, rather than welcome her newfound enlightenment. She had perfected the art of escaping the coop - earning yet another nickname “Hendini” which wasn’t so bad - and would spend most of her time with the docile sheep. She would flap her way up onto a sheep’s back where she would spend hours surveying the farm and contemplating life. What she really wished for was a book.  

As Amelia had temporarily given up trying to impress the ladies with her intellectual prowess, she had plenty of time to explore the three-hundred and fifty year-old back-brain of the alligator juniper. Nestled into the woolly down of Meryl Sheep’s back, Amelia began her ruminations. The farm faded from her mind’s eye and her attention focused on a very young alligator juniper, no taller than 4 feet high and definitely lacking its thick black lightening scar. She knew this had been Yavbe land, a band of the Yavapai Indigenous peoples. Even as a sapling, the alligator juniper had been a favorite spot for teaching young ones. Amelia felt frustrated with her clumsy wings that itched to prepare ocotillo branches for shelters and work animal hides for clothing. Before their encounter with white people, the Yavapai mostly subsisted on hunting and gathering, so the alligator juniper’s memory of them held gaps of time that often spanned decades. It was a peaceful time for this land, one day melting into the next almost exclusively shaped by the rhythms of the natural world.

Until it wasn’t. The Yavbe’s way of life changed almost overnight, some changes were welcomed, while others were not. The Yavbe did their best to honor their culture and traditions while exploring concepts brought from foreign lands. Amelia felt the stress that flowed through the water and through the trees. She shivered. This is not sustainable. But the new stress did not leave and instead continued to grow. She watched the Yavbe people rounded up and marched off their land, right by the alligator juniper. What followed was a pulling and prodding of the land, the new inhabitants incessantly asking it to be what it was not. These people, instead of tickling the surface of the Earth with gentle strides, bore deep down into her, like sand fleas, in search of precious metal and even more precious water. Amelia felt the water that flowed through the juniper turn hot and sour. The water was poison. 

Amelia snapped out of her reverie and scurried off Meryl’s back, her back claw getting tangled in the wool and causing her to somersault before hitting the ground. She didn’t care about the ache in her left drumstick and made a beeline for the ladies who were repairing a loose board in the fence. Forgetting that she could not talk, Amelia ran up to them screaming, “POISON!! POISON!! THE WATER IS POISON!! WE ARE ALL BEING POISONED!!” Of course all the ladies heard was hysterical squawking. Amelia clamped her beak shut. She paced for a few seconds and then ran over to the well pump. She then pretended to drink from the muddy pool by the base of the pump and then acted out a very dramatic, but convincing death scene, complete with staggering, wings splayed on the ground, and a final flop onto her back, soft orange belly exposed to the heavens. She laid there panting with her eyes closed until she felt a shadow pass over her. Popping her eyes open, she stared up into the faces of two very worried farm ladies. She then sprang to her feet and pointed at the well, then turned her back on it. The lady that always wore purple started to slow clap. The lady that never wore purple crossed her arms and said, “Amelia Egghart, or should I call you Sophia Lor-hen, you do know that your only purpose here is to lay eggs, right? This is entertaining and all, but I’m beginning to think you’ve forgotten your place in this here food chain.” 

That evening as the two ladies sat on their porch enjoying a glass of wine, the purple lady recounted Amelia’s odd behavior she witnessed while cleaning water dishes at the well pump. Amelia stilled and listened closely while the never-purple lady told her story about Amelia’s hot lap around the veggie bed that ended in a barrel roll. As the two ladies continued to talk about Amelia’s increasingly bizarre behavior, culminating in her poisoned-well death dance, she began to think that perhaps her plan had backfired. Both ladies were silent for several minutes. Finally, the lady who wore purple said, “Well, you know what this means, right?” The no-purple lady nodded and said, “Yeah, it’s time to eat her.”