The Stories We've Heard

Alan teaches 7th and 8th grade Language Arts at a neighborhood Chicago public school. His school began hosting an annual Science Night last year to get kids more excited about science. On Science Night, they set up tables with representatives from different museums and have demonstrations of scientific (sometimes explosive) experiments and participatory activities. When she found out that we were raising chickens, the assistant principal of the school approached Alan about bringing our chickens to Science Night and he agreed.

                              

                                   Getting ready to go to school

So, that night, which happened to be his birthday, Alan, Aidan and Maddie and I packed up our chickens and drove them to his school. We set up a temporary pen, making walls out of old science fair posters and filling it with wood shavings, in the gymnasium. The idea was that the kids would stand in the pen and hold the chickens while learning about how to raise them as pets. What we hadn't expected was the level of excitement the presence of chickens in the school generated. The kids went nuts over them. They piled into the pen and passed the chickens around. Some of them were kind of rough with them, but most were careful. We were afraid that the chickens would be too overstimulated, but they survived intact.

What was most interesting to me about that experience was all of the stories I heard from the parents. Alan's school has a large percentage of immigrants from a variety of countries, including Mexico, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, India, and Pakistan. Our chickens brought back memories for many of the parents who spoke to us.A mom from Vietnam told us that people in her village raised chickens in their backyards. At night, the chickens would fly up into the trees and sleep and then fly down to look for food in the mornings. When Alan asked her what happened if a predator got one of them, she said, "Oh, we'd just get another one. It wasn't that big of a deal."

Most of the parents were surprised to learn that you could keep chickens in the city. I think a lot of them were wondering why we would want to keep chickens in the U.S., where buying eggs from a store is much easier. They probably also thought we had put too much money into them by building such an elaborate coop and buying feed. For most of them, chickens were just around for eggs and if they got eaten, that was life. 

Since then, I've heard more stories from immigrants. Aidan has a friend whose parents were born and raised in Mexico. When learning about our pet chickens, his friend's dad talked about growing up on a large farm back in Mexico and how much he loved living there. "Even though my father had so much and such good land with so many animals, he had this crazy idea that we would do better in America," he told Alan. Now Aidan's friend is living in a small apartment with no backyard and his dad is wondering why they left in the first place. It was interesting to hear from someone who felt that America, the "land of opportunity," had fewer opportunities than the country from which he had come.

Such conversations have been illuminating for me, providing more insight into the lives of the people who are in my neighborhood. It's funny, when we decided to have chickens for pets (and eggs), I had no idea that they would be a trigger for so many stories. It's not something I expected, but I'm grateful that I have one more way of connecting with other people. . . This blog is another way, so please "connect" with me by sharing your own story!