ICJ: Early memory of the death of an animal

Hello! Although this is not technically a prompt meant to be put on the blog, I thought I'd use this platform to collect all the writings I do throughout the semester in one place online. Unless things become a bit too personal with the in-class-journal (ICJ), which I can't really imagine, I'll be posting all the writing I do for creative nonfiction here on this blog. You're welcome. (har. har.)

I don't exactly remember why we got chickens in the first place. Whenever we'd stop by the feed store to pick up goat good in the springtime, we would always play with the baby chicks in their warm, well lit cardboard boxes, but our yard wasn't really a farm yard.

One year, on Easter, however, we bought two. One, a tiny half-dead rooster I called Easter (fitting, I know) and one strong, healthy hen my brother named Twister, for his favorite movie.

We'd only had them for a year or two when I woke up one cold December morning and found a somber dad and brother at the kitchen table. Apparently, that morning, they'd found pieces of the two animals strewn around the backyard. Twister's carcass they eventually found- all we had left of Easter were large clumps of feathers. He'd put up more of a fight, it seemed. I cried for a good hour, assuming correctly that the murderer was one of those bastard stray cats, tearing down from my walls anything even remotely feline. Granted, there wasn't much, aside from a fake award for "Most Motivated" with a grinning clip art kitty at the top, but I tore it down anyways. Then I took to my journal and drew a graphic illustration of myself murdering said murderer cat.

(That's when Prof. Johnson told us to stop writing. If I'd had more time, maybe I would have talked about how even though Easter looked half-dead as a chick, he grew up to be an adorable little man, with pale yellow and jet black feathers puffing him up like the proud rooster he was. I could have also talked about how his feet, instead of being stick-like and scaly, were covered with those same feathers, making it look like he was constantly wearing a pair of flamboyant flared pants. Maybe I might have mentioned how I could pick him up with one hand and carry him about the yard with me as I did my chores, or how Twister would drink wads of spit off the sidewalk and crickets we threw in her direction, or how Easter used to pick fights with the goats and refused to back down until human intervention, or how even after they died I spread chicken seed around their old house in mourning. Or maybe I wouldn't have mentioned any of that. Who knows.)