My 18-year-old son, Zach, trudged quietly to the graveside, a red geranium clutched in his hand. I walked alongside him and his brother and sisters followed close behind. The dim November light and the fallow brown fields provided a sombre backdrop for the funeral of a dear member of the family: Pipsqueak the chicken.
Our family lives on a farm, and we?ve had hundreds of friendly chickens through the years, most of whom ended up being composted in the manure pile after their death from natural causes. But Pipsqueak required a proper burial because she was no ordinary chicken. She was my son?s therapy pet.
That?s right, my son didn?t have a dog or a horse for a support animal?he had a chicken.
Zach and Pipsqueak both joined our family eight years ago, just a month apart. Zach was an emaciated kid with undiagnosed special needs twitching with anxiety after years in foster care. He was delayed at school and needed to attend a speech and language camp, but he refused to go. I begged and begged and then finally bartered. ?I?ll do it for a pet chicken? he decided. That?s when Pipsqueak, a Silkie hen with soft downy feathers and a little Victorian plume on top of her head, entered his life. Soon after joining our family, Zach was diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and an intellectual delay that made managing his significant anxiety disorder a difficult task. Immensely afraid of insects and always on alert for a storm rolling in, Zach remained housebound vibrating with ...