Good Friday means different things to different people. For me, it’s the day I met my only pet. This was no puppy, iguana, or goldfish. In fact, as a little boy, I had a rooster and, thus, remain partial to these majestic creatures.
My family and I named him Chickadee, after hilarious curmudgeon W.C. Fields’ film My Little Chickadee. I got him in second grade, when public school teachers hatched eggs in incubators and then gave their students the ensuing baby chicks on Good Friday. This was what transpired in Mrs. Yellen’s classroom in 1972. Try that in the Los Angeles city schools today. You would be fired for Christian nationalism. (RELATED: Why Good Friday Is the Best of All Days)
The idea was that these baby chicks would serve as living, breathing Peeps. They were much like those delicious, irresistible, neon-yellow marshmallow candies that might not ‘Make America Healthy Again.’ One key difference: These baby chicks were expected to have the good taste to expire over Easter weekend, so as not to burden anyone.
That Good Friday afternoon, I recall bringing my tiny yellow chick home inside a shoe box with ventilation holes punched into the sides. Although my two sisters and I had a babysitter named Mrs. Antonia Antrum, for some reason, I walked home that afternoon instead of across the street from Sixth Avenue Elementary School, straight to her house.
Somewhere along that 15-minute route, beneath our neighborhood’s towering palm trees, a dog on a front lawn began barking ferociously at Chickadee and me. I stood there, paralyzed, for about 10 minutes. I was terrified that if I moved an inch, the canine would attack me, rip the box from my hands, and devour that sweet, baby bird.
If memory serves — some 53 years after I last thought about this — that hound barked himself silly, simmered down, and let us continue home in peace.
Once safely at our house, we took good care of Chickadee, as it was the right thing to do. I reckoned that he might like unpopped popcorn. He did! That, water, and table scraps kept him happy and healthy.
Rather than clock out by Easter Monday, Chickadee survived and grew bigger and bigger. The burning question was: “Is he a boy or a girl?” (Forgive us. That was a time of binary choices.) Unlike a puppy, you can’t flip a baby chick over and tell what sex it was assigned at birth, much less that day’s gender identity. Despite what their names suggest, cocks reveal precious little between their drumsticks.
One morning, from outside, we heard the sound of Chickadee flapping his wings and then squeaking his first, hoarse “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” My parents, sisters, and I looked at each other in astonishment. “He’s a rooster!”
Chickadee with his family: Lorna, Deroy, Sheila, and Oscar Murdock (Photo: Marcia Murdock)
Once Chickadee started crowing, we immediately thought, “Uh-oh! What will the neighbors think?” Even though we imagined that it was illegal to husband livestock within Los Angeles’s city limits, we were not about to surrender (or — worse — dispose of) our new pet. So, we bunked him in the garage at night. He slept inside a cage that my Mr. Fix-It father fashioned from four window screens.
The garage proved sufficiently soundproof: Chickadee’s crowing at dawn’s early light left our neighbors neither shaken nor stirred. Just before I left for school each morning, I freed him from the garage for another relaxing day in our garden.
Beneath a giant grapefruit tree, in which I often sat and read books, Chickadee grazed in the grass and feasted on worms and bugs. Sometimes he amused himself by rolling around and bathing in the dirt. He shook his feathers loose and instantly became whiter than a sack of flour.
Chickadee Murdock, 1972-1979 (Photo courtesy of Deroy Murdock)
He looked just like Foghorn Leghorn. (For those too young to remember that magnificent Looney Tunes character, imagine U.S. Senator John Kennedy covered with white feathers.) Chickadee gave no hint of a Southern accent. However, he strutted about much like his cartoon counterpart.
Chickadee ruled the roost — our spacious, tranquil yard in a residential community, from the early to late 1970s. Southern California back then was the place to be on the entire Earth. Hollywood’s directors and TV producers, Laurel Canyon’s rock stars, Pasadena’s rocket scientists, the South Bay’s defense contractors, and the region’s real-estate developers all thrived beneath constant sunshine and cozy breezes. Much like Florida today, people cascaded in from everywhere to enjoy the growth and good vibrations. And Chickadee was along for the ride.
Chickadee loved me and my father, and the feeling was mutual. We fed him and shared the pleasure of putting him in the garage at night. He appreciated that and was always happy to see us.
But that rooster was a son of a bitch with everyone else. He had tough, pointed spurs on his legs. The meter man traversed the back gate one afternoon to certify how much of the Department of Water and Power’s juice we had consumed. Chickadee was not amused: He attacked the meter man, who fled into the alley.
From that day forward, the meter man came through the front door to document our kilowatt consumption.
Meanwhile, my maternal uncles, Howard and Lauren, used to torture me by openly suggesting that we turn Chickadee into soup. More than once, that drove me to tears. Thankfully, they were joking, and my rooster never wound up in hot water.
In that connection, this question occurs: What’s it like to have had a pet whose distant cousins are on virtually every menu worldwide?
I eat chicken, and not rarely. I focus on the meat, not its source. I also comfort myself with this thought, paraphrasing some folk wisdom about another edible animal, courtesy of Homer Simpson: “It’s chicken, Deroy. Not a chicken.”
Chickadee was my friend, and I was his.
He lived a comfortable life until he unexpectedly passed away overnight, at the age of six years, nine months, and 24 days.
After a thorough cry, my sisters, Sheila and Lorna, and I prepared Chickadee to leave us much as he arrived. We placed his remains in a shoebox, along with a poem that our father, Oscar, wrote about him. Along with our ever-patient mother, Marcia, we all buried our beautiful bird beneath the bushes under which he loved to poke around.
May Mr. Chickadee Murdock continue to rest in peace.
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Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.
