Easter Chickens

Our Dad was famous in our eyes for bringing home gifts from the road throughout our childhood. One particular time he arrived home from England with a set of Beatles lunch boxes, each came with a neat thermos. We danced around with joy for hours until after later inspection we realized they were all stamped on the bottom with "Nashville Airport." We were crushed.

Easter always reminds me of one of those "special gifts." This particular Easter he came home with brightly colored baby chickens, one for each of us. We were thrilled with our new little pets. They were much easier to handle than the baby crocodiles he brought home the year before. They met their demise after eating too much bologna and surviving in our bathtub. Mom was not happy. Back to the chickens, after hours of amusing myself with my energetic sweet little pink chicken I decided to see what my siblings were up to. I happily skipped around the corner of our 1960's ranch house only to be tackled hard by my much younger, smaller brother Sonny Boy. Something was drastically wrong. I was so surprised at the strength of his tackle that I began laughing hysterically because I knew something was amiss. After screams of laughter and agony mixed in Pam and Connie came running. I felt he was hiding something from me. I yelled "Sonny Boy is hiding something!" They soon discovered his little lavendar colored chicken at deaths door in a deep puddle nearby left over from a rain storm. Sonny Boy had confused his chicken for a duck in trying to make it swim...minutes later the chick took it's last breath. Sonny was devastated that he had killed his pet, not knowing the difference between a chicken and a duck. We consoled him as best we could. We secretly wondered what Dad would bring home the next year.

Since that time, I've learned that chocolate bunnies make the best gifts at Easter, and the only agony involved is the stomach ache your kids have later.