Who Gives a Cluck?

I'll get right to the best part: In 1945, Colorado farmer Lloyd Olsen was preparing to sell a chicken when he hit a snag. As Sy Montgomery explains in What the Chicken Knows, Olsen "failed to kill the rooster when his ax missed the bird's carotid artery and left one ear and most of the brain stem intact. … He grew from two and a half pounds to eight, and attained national fame as Mike the Headless Chicken on the sideshow circuit from 1945 to 1947." What Mike did on the circuit, presumably, was run around like a chicken with his head cut off.

This is unlikely to be the author's favorite part. Montgomery, who previously wrote The Soul of an Octopus, a National Book Award finalist, published this booklet (previously a chapter from Birdology) "to enhance our wonder and deepen our respect and our compassion for these common creatures we all think we know."

And honestly, what we think we know is these birds aren't very smart (to wit, the term "birdbrain," not to mention its depiction in pop culture from the Muppets to Moana). But as Montgomery points out, chickens will freely return to their pens at night—sleeping in their own hierarchical arrangement, i.e., a pecking order. Research indicates they are able to distinguish more than 100 other chickens. Roosters supposedly recognize themselves in the mirror. They also bring food to a flock's attention and warn of impending danger. Much like cats, chickens will often present their owners with gifts such as freshly laid eggs. A neighbor tells the author about one chicken that "unscrewed the plumbing to the soapstone sink—and brought me the ring and the gasket."

In other words, chickens get a bad rap. Of course they're also great in wraps. And in spicy chicken sandwiches and as hot wings. Americans now consume more chicken than beef or pork—roughly 100 pounds per person annually according to the National Chicken Council. Last year, the population of broiler chickens in the United States was 9.4 billion, the vast majority of them raised by family farmers. Montgomery, however, is not one of them, thereby sparing her the pain and guilt of slaughtering birds to which she's become attached.

And I do mean attached: "Some evenings my husband finds me in the henhouse," she writes, "caressing one or two chickens, eye level with my perching friends, as if one of the flock. He has sometimes overheard me join their evening conversation. 'Yes, Ladies,' he heard me say one night, 'you're my beauties. I love you so much.'" And they love her! "They are waiting for me to pick them up, stroke them, and sometimes—yes, I admit it, despite medical warnings of the slight chance of contracting salmonella—kiss their warm, red, rubbery combs." I'll throw one more in for good measure: "Most of the day, at least one chick, often two, is somewhere on my body."

All that said, we also learn that chickens can be vicious and not just to predators. When one of the author's birds suffered a neck injury, the rest of the flock "were biting cruelly at the bloody wound, scolding and chasing her savagely." Turns out chickens are instinctually drawn to the sight of blood—even their own—and will peck at a wound to the point of death.

Montgomery's decision to raise chickens was a labor of love—not just due to the care and cleaning involved but also because of the eventual disposal of carcasses. While broiler chickens are sold at around five to eight weeks, pet hens live at best five or six years. That, however, is not the issue. Living in New Hampshire, those free-ranging chickens are fair game, so to speak, for hawks, foxes, minks, ermines, dogs, and, one time, a bear. And wiring them in can only do so much. A neighbor tells Montgomery about the time raccoons, "with their dexterous black hands, had grabbed hens through the chicken wire, and literally pureed the birds through the fence." Due to such unfortunate incidents, Montgomery's flock dwindled, though she has no regrets.

In 2003 the late David Foster Wallace covered the Maine Lobster Festival for Gourmet magazine. "Consider the Lobster," which appeared a year later, caused an uproar since it was less about a celebration of a sacred New England staple as it was about the cruelty toward crustaceans. ("Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off.") This isn't the aim of What the Chicken Knows. Montgomery (herself a vegetarian) is not trying to dissuade us from eating those highly addictive Chick-fil-A nuggets. As her subtitle states, it's simply an appreciation.

The French chef Jacques Pépin wrote his own homage to the bird. The only difference is that Art of the Chicken contains his paintings of poultry plus mouth-watering recipes. He describes how "chickens satisfy and heighten all of my senses: smelling a chicken roasting in the oven, tasting its browned skin, hearing the cocorico, seeing the vibrant colors of roosters, and feeling their soft plumage."

In other words, be grateful to the bird before we sink our teeth into it. And if you still feel a tinge of guilt after reading this book, there's always turkey.

What the Chicken Knows: A New Appreciation of the World's Most Familiar Bird
by Sy Montgomery
Atria Books, 70 pp., $22.99

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