Jim Says It Best

After my public emotional collapse over Popeye on Monday, I had pretty well sworn off writing for a while. A man can only expose so much of his dignity to daylight before the neighbors begin discussing him in hushed tones near the mailbox.

I figured I would spend a few quiet days pretending to be mentally stable. Then my friend Jim Cleek in Virginia City, by way of Mark Twain and Dayton, sent me a message.

Now, Jim is one of those dangerous men God places on Earth strictly to keep seriousness from gaining too much ground. He possesses the survival instincts of a lawn chair in a tornado and the judgment of a raccoon with gambling debts.

His message read: “A chicken has suddenly adopted me. Maybe a refugee from the neighbors. Hope I don’t get emotionally hijacked as Popeye did to you. I have already named him Lucky Clucky. He keeps looking in the screen door, like he wants something.”

Right there, I knew the bird had finished Jim. Because naming an animal is the first shovel of dirt onto the grave of your independence, as once you name it, you begin assigning motives to it, then personality, then constitutional rights, and before he knows it, he’s defending its emotional boundaries to strangers.

Naturally, I answered: “Invite it in. Chickens make good pets.”

Jim replied immediately: “What the cluck? I’m not responsible enough.”

Now there speaks a man with at least one functioning survival instinct left, but by then it was already too late. The chicken had crossed the invisible line between wildlife and roommate.

So, I sent the only proper response available to a civilized man: “Then invite it in for dinner.”

There was a long silence after that. Long enough that I imagined Jim standing at his screen door while this feathered drifter stared back at him like a tiny, unemployed relative hoping to borrow money.

I know exactly how this story ends, by the way.

Today it’s “Lucky Clucky.” Tomorrow, Jim is buying cracked corn in fifty-pound sacks and explaining to visitors that chickens are “surprisingly intelligent.”

Within two weeks, he’ll be rearranging furniture because “the bird likes watching television from that chair.” It is how these things happen.

A creature appears half-starved and confused at your door, and you tell yourself you are maintaining emotional distance. Meanwhile, the animal is already reviewing the mortgage paperwork.

Popeye taught me that.

One day, you are a grown man with principles. The next day, you are negotiating sleeping arrangements with a half-blind goblin dog who barks at lamps and has declared martial law over your couch.

Animals do not enter your life. They occupy territory.

And the truly humiliating thing is how willingly we surrender. Especially men who claim they “don’t want pets.”

Those are always the worst cases. They become the sort of people who cook chicken separately because “Lucky Clucky doesn’t like seasoning.”

Jim says he is not responsible enough for a chicken. That may be true, but the chicken clearly disagrees.

And in these matters, the animal usually gets the final vote.