The Present
I have been having this feeling of wanting a pet recently. Why eh? I kinda miss those days when we used to have quite a number of pets. Am I influenced by my niece? She is pestering for a pet… first she wanted a chicken then a dog (which we can’t keep as a pet), and now a cat.
Being persistent… she finally made my parents buy her 2 chicks few months back. Of course, I was horrified at the sight of the 2 little fragile looking chicks in a box. They were toooo small… (cute…but…) how could the guy in the market separate them from their mother and sell it? I was mad at first but then tried to adjust to the idea of having those 2 chicks as a pet... Maybe buying them would save them from the miseries of being some form of display-material in the market. Then the nightmares began… the chicks wouldn’t stop chitter-ing. Not that I’m annoyed (actually, kinda…) but I was more worried about the chicks’ conditions. Why wouldn’t it stop making those sad sounds? Lerr..ye aar… They still need the comfort of a warm feathered mother rite…
So what I did – I tried putting my palm in the box to provide some warmth… and they’d come sit close to my palm and stop the chitters…. Then once I remove em, they’d start all over again… I even slept late trying to comfort them but I couldn’t leave my hands there forever aite. Then weekdays came, I needed to get back to campus… and so I left; at the back of my head, worried about the fate of the chicks. Night came… I called home… and was told that one of the chicks died. Mom said Ain was crying dramatically and gushing in tears…Her first loss. Next day, the other chick died… and this time, Ain was calmer. Mom said it reminds her of how we would cry ‘dramatically’ every time a pet died or suffered an injury. Then... old memories come flushing down…
Being persistent… she finally made my parents buy her 2 chicks few months back. Of course, I was horrified at the sight of the 2 little fragile looking chicks in a box. They were toooo small… (cute…but…) how could the guy in the market separate them from their mother and sell it? I was mad at first but then tried to adjust to the idea of having those 2 chicks as a pet... Maybe buying them would save them from the miseries of being some form of display-material in the market. Then the nightmares began… the chicks wouldn’t stop chitter-ing. Not that I’m annoyed (actually, kinda…) but I was more worried about the chicks’ conditions. Why wouldn’t it stop making those sad sounds? Lerr..ye aar… They still need the comfort of a warm feathered mother rite…
So what I did – I tried putting my palm in the box to provide some warmth… and they’d come sit close to my palm and stop the chitters…. Then once I remove em, they’d start all over again… I even slept late trying to comfort them but I couldn’t leave my hands there forever aite. Then weekdays came, I needed to get back to campus… and so I left; at the back of my head, worried about the fate of the chicks. Night came… I called home… and was told that one of the chicks died. Mom said Ain was crying dramatically and gushing in tears…Her first loss. Next day, the other chick died… and this time, Ain was calmer. Mom said it reminds her of how we would cry ‘dramatically’ every time a pet died or suffered an injury. Then... old memories come flushing down…
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The Past
We had quite a number of cats and chickens as pets, ermm.. Kiki was the mother of all cats, and there was one rooster named “Kelthe” meaning ‘the old one” which lived for a record of 10 years, (has the same birth year as me) and was the head of the chick-o-tribe.
Kelthe ~ My father got him when he was still a chick, before I was born – basically making him older than me. As he grew, he became the mighty superstar rooster in the quarter’s area. There were plenty of other broods of chickens in the neighborhood. Kelthe always put a fight with other roosters from other broods. In his record, from the series of fights, a serious fight caused one of his eyes to go blind. Because of his poor vision, a few years after that, he was hit by a car… but survived…. A tough guy he was… but he was a bit crippled due to the accident.
The fact that he was getting older made him stopped fighting and stayed in our lawn most of the time. Then, his other eye and vision deteriorated, looked like it had Cataract. So he became more inactive. But we always brought him for a short walk around the lawn… He would use his “touching” senses through his beak or claws to look for food. Sometimes, my sisters and I would feed him by placing the grains on our palms, making him feel through his beak. Memorizing the position he’d start eating them. Sometimes we kinda teased him by changing the position of our hands and he’d be hitting on air, then looking for it all over again. We’d be laughing, pet him and place our palms under his beak again. Forgive the immaturity…kiddos maaa….
We had quite a number of cats and chickens as pets, ermm.. Kiki was the mother of all cats, and there was one rooster named “Kelthe” meaning ‘the old one” which lived for a record of 10 years, (has the same birth year as me) and was the head of the chick-o-tribe.
Kelthe ~ My father got him when he was still a chick, before I was born – basically making him older than me. As he grew, he became the mighty superstar rooster in the quarter’s area. There were plenty of other broods of chickens in the neighborhood. Kelthe always put a fight with other roosters from other broods. In his record, from the series of fights, a serious fight caused one of his eyes to go blind. Because of his poor vision, a few years after that, he was hit by a car… but survived…. A tough guy he was… but he was a bit crippled due to the accident.
The fact that he was getting older made him stopped fighting and stayed in our lawn most of the time. Then, his other eye and vision deteriorated, looked like it had Cataract. So he became more inactive. But we always brought him for a short walk around the lawn… He would use his “touching” senses through his beak or claws to look for food. Sometimes, my sisters and I would feed him by placing the grains on our palms, making him feel through his beak. Memorizing the position he’d start eating them. Sometimes we kinda teased him by changing the position of our hands and he’d be hitting on air, then looking for it all over again. We’d be laughing, pet him and place our palms under his beak again. Forgive the immaturity…kiddos maaa….
Kelthe... macho kan...
Maybe not many people opt for chickens as pets… ehehehe…. truth is, they are just as entertaining as other pets.
My sisters and I enjoy playing with them,, feeding them. They have their own characters. Some very memorable.... Oh ya, collecting their feathers that fell off from their skin and doing some creative things with it. Haha... those days without internet, huh....
Unforgettable Incident:
One day, the neighborhood was visited by an unwanted guest, a big iguana (biawak gedik) from a bush nearby… the whole neighborhood went panicky. “Go to the chickens!” was my mom’s first reaction.
The chickens were squawking in trepidation. It was a 2-storey coop, so the younger chickens had all climbed up, but Kelthe couldn’t make it. It so happened, the iguana was already in our next door neighbor’s lawn, right behind our chicken coop. As we were running out from the back door, two of the younger chickens jumped back down, and started making loud alarming noises, at the same time, trying to cover him with their wings. Then, I saw a glimpse of that big biawak, (mungkin kah bayangan ngeri itulah mbuatkan aku takut cicak sampai skarang?? hmm.. possible kan?) it ran away as we were shouting frantically and I guess someone was throwing some stones or some sort to its direction. Ouh.. I was very very proud of those chickens... macho siot. Harapan bangsa ayam-ayam sedunia...
Btw, the filthy looking biawak, was finally caught, efforts of the whole neighborhood. They used a reban rotan to trap the biawak inside and guarded it. I waited anxiously as the iguana relentlessly tried to escape… and I wondered why they didn’t just kill it? Later came a few chinese guys in a lorry, taking back the biawak. I heard that they were taking it to a restaurant to be made into exotic meal… for a small girl like me at that time; it was horrifying to discover that people eat lizards… what an adventurous way of discovering new knowledge…
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This white shoes… I don’t remember choosing this one, but I remember loving it so much. I was proud of this pair of shoes and I made sure no one touched it.
