City Chicken

I found a city chicken today. It was a little lost, even though it was in the city I think it was looking for its field of mud and grass. People walked by, stepping over the old chicken. Rickshaws spun past, covering the chicken with even more dust from the road. Taxis brooomed and auto rickshaws beeeeped. Hand human rickshaws rinnnnged and hand pulled carts 'yaaaahed'. The lost chicken was scared. Beeeep, Brooom, Rinnnng, Yaaaah, Swush, Swish, Step Ta Ta. The lost chicken was flustered as it pecked and scratched in the concrete of the pavement. Exhaust fumes and stove smoke whirled around her, as if giving a smell to the continuous commotion. The madness of the moving street. But the pavement seemed to have a little compassion for the lost chicken. The pavement silently called to the chicken. The chicken fluttered and scratched and clucked and clacked clumsily over to a patch of broken, jagged stones. The pavement was a border for the traffic (although the road was not a boundary for pedestrians) but it was also broken and holey, rubble and stones, dirt and brick.

The compassionate broken pavement invited the chicken to keep digging, to keep pecking, and the old lost chicken did just that. Scratching, and pecking, and digging and flicking aside tiny fragments of concrete. Dig, peck, scratch, scratch, peck, dig. Frantically and furiously, the chicken was searching for familiarity. For protection. In the middle of the pavement, in the middle of the feet, in the middle of the city, in the middle of the day, the chicken was successfully digging herself a home. Despite her fear, and the noise and the chaos, and no other live chickens anywhere near her, the lost chicken made her nest in the broken concrete of the pavement and fluttered down to cluck some more.