The BLACK CHICKEN Story

So, I'm going to ASU living in a little house at the bottom of South Mountain in the Valley of the Sun. It's a very rural neighborhood. A lot of animals around. Farm animals mostly. Wild from the mountain sometimes.

The house I'm living in shares access to like a series of little fenced pastures with the house next door. Next door, they own a pony, an old horse, some goats, some sheep, so many dogs (like the Bumpus hounds), and they always had chickens. They'd get pallets of randomly assorted chicks to raise.

At any rate, because the house I'm living in is situated with all these animals, although they're not mine, there's really no stopping some of these animals when they want to go somewhere. Especially the chickens. They'd be in 'my yard' all the time. I liked watching them from my kitchen, where, you should know, there's a glass backdoor.

You also need to know that one night, a stray cat decided to have her litter of kittens right by that very glass door. What are you going to do? You get a box and a blanket and you hope it's somehow helping or protecting the mamacat, and you stay up half the night watching this miracle, this spontaneous miracle of life.

And then a few days after giving birth, the mamacat just left! Left her little defenseless kittens on my doorstep! Well what are you going to do. You're going to care for the little kittens, of course you are. But you're torn about bringing them inside, for a couple reasons. Mainly, what if that wild mamacat comes back?...

So you're feeding the kittens outside... and the CHICKENS (there they are again) would really like some of that kitten food for a change. And lots of chickens come around. And the kittens really don't stand a chance against the chickens, so you're guarding the kittens from the chickens while they eat. Right?

One chicken. A black chicken. Black beak even. Black feet even. A totally black chicken with red eyes. This chicken did not care that I was trying to prevent it from getting at the kitten food. This chicken was like excuse me, I do what I want.

It's not running around aimlessly like many chickens do. It's not getting distracted. It is moving with purpose. It will not be stopped.

So what I did is... let me say this first: I did not kick the chicken. What I did was sort of shied it a ways with my foot. And the chicken flapped up in the air, it's all indignant. And then it looked at me. It looked at me with those red eyes. And I was like that chicken is looking at me. That's wild.

And I left it at that. By that time the kittens had finished their food. I went inside. I'm in the kitchen now, making myself a little coffee; gonna get myself ready to go do some writing. And I feel like... I feel like I'm being watched. Like vividly. So I look. And just outside that glass back door... it's beak almost against the glass... that black chicken is staring at me. Those red eyes. And I thought, that is so clucking wild! Chickens don't like, remember things for very long. But that black chicken is upset.

And I thought that is so funny. And then I was like, well that's done, and I leave the chicken with it's chicken face against the glass backdoor, and I go into my little study. Do some writing.

So I'm sitting at my desk, swiveling, just picking some random things out of the air, I'm having fun. And then all of a sudden I get this feeling like... Like I'm being watched. I'm even a little spooked you know, that feeling when maybe there's like actual danger, and I swivel all aggressively around!

And that black chicken had hopped up in the little orange tree outside my study window. That black chicken must have followed me with its eyes as I left the kitchen, and then, that chicken must decided to follow me, and succeeded in finding its way around the outside of my house, to follow my steps inside the house... it followed me around a corner of the house, and then, hopped up in a tree (which it correctly guessed would overlook the place where I would be), and then just stared at me. It stared at my back. Until I turned around.

And I was like... this chicken is clucking amazing!! This chicken is like the smartest coolest most ferocious chicken in the ever, like in the ever-was! This chicken clucking scared me for a minute for crimeny! This CHICKEN?! This chicken's amazing!... etc.

I break eye contact first. I still give the win to the chicken. There I was, already freewriting, I'm gonna write a spoof about this, a little poem about the most horrible, horrible creature in the world and how it's going to destroy us ALL... The most fearsome creature there is. Inviting people to imagine what it could possibly be... And then the last lines,

IT'S THE BLACK CHICKEN!

HERE! NOW!

I finish this little poem and I read it over again, and I think, this is funny. I mean, it makes me laugh. Every time.. But maybe that's just because I think this chicken is so amazing and it just won't stop cracking me up...

At any rate, now I've got this piece. And I've got access to this black chicken...

And, I'm aware of like every open mic, seven-minutes-in-heaven, use-our-late-night-cafe-for-pig-heart-theatre, like, every experimental venue in a 60 mile radius. There used to be a bunch of them in Phoenix and they gathered a super eclectic crowd. (If you've ever read Daniel Pinkwater's Snark Out Boys and the Avocado of Death (a masterwork alongside his book, Borgel), the crowd at these shows was like a snark out crowd, however you're imagining a snark out crowd looks.)

Long story short, I make a few calls and then we (the chicken and me) land our first booking. It's only a couple days away.

I get permission from the chicken's "owner" to take the chicken with me to do a show; I herded this amazing chicken (this most amazing chicken) into a hard-shell cat-carrier, I've done my eyes all dark like a Poe creation or a Gory ink drawing, I've got the cat carrier, in the car, with the chicken, and so far so good.

We arrive at the venue. The chicken is silent. And you could like, feel a stillness coming from the carrier. And my heart sank because I thought about how stupid I was just about to look in front of, you know, people. This is going to be like a WB frog scenario I thought the chicken probably won't do anything, shoot...What did I expect was going to happen?

But here we are. So let's see. I get backstage. I drape a sheet over the cat carrier. And then I think, man.... I hope I'm not just traumatizing this chicken right now. I'm down on my knees; I check under the sheet. And the chicken is just totally, totally still. It is looking at me. Not with anger, not with malice, but with an awful kind of dispassionateness. Like it didn't care at all that I was there. Like it saw beyond me. At first I was almost like, shocked, and like, hurt, and then I thought again that, this chicken is just clucking amazing.

I go tell the stage manager that you'll see me leave the stage but the set won't be done, s'alright? S'alright. S'alright.

And we're on. I go out there, classic standup spotlight, with the carrier, covered in a sheet. Silence just hangs. Just awful and awkward silence. It was great. And then I unfolded a burnt piece of paper (my poem) and dark Poe-Gory eyes staring, I tell the tale of the most horrible, horrible, etc. etc.

And the poem builds and at last I say,

IT'S THE BLACK CHICKEN!

HERE! NOW!

And I'd tear the sheet away from the cat carrier. And people were like, ...wut, because there was nothing to see... so they're leaning forward a little, and they're squinting and they're murmuring to each other a little... and then I squeezed the little cat carrier door thing that opens the door. And people were like, you know, it could be anything...

And then for a moment, the door just hung open, and nothing happened. Just long enough for people to start thinking ...oh I get it, there's isn't actually anything, it must be like symbolic or something, you know, and then the chicken.... appeared. Out of the darkness of the cat carrier. This totally black chicken with red eyes, it's little head bobbing all sharp, all around, and it's eyes, it's red eyes, all hot laser focused... And people leapt out of their chairs! People screamed with surprise. People like, did not know what to do. They were like ...it's a chicken!!!!!!

And then I would flee the stage in horror at the chicken! And then people LOST THEIR MINDS AGAIN because then... they were alone with the chicken! And that chicken took the stage. It was amazingly fun and funny for me to watch the audience watch the chicken. It seemed, like in that moment, we all shared in each other's joy and terror; there was nothing else.

That chicken was clucking AMAZING.

Well, you might imagine, after that, we (the chicken and me) had a number of invitations and offers to play on some very nice sets! And we did them all! And she was always amazing, that chicken. People followed the act in order to bring other people with them to see that chicken. I loved that chicken. We all did. The high and the low of the 'snark out' crowd. Universally beloved, The Black Chicken.

Eventually, of course, the chicken died. Maybe 6-8 months after the whole thing started. I don't think it had anything to do with the shows. I think, and I think it sincerely that: the chicken loved the shows. And I know, at any rate, the chicken owned those shows...

And I mourned the chicken when it died. I still do in a way.

We (the chicken and me) were still getting requests to open for standups and stuff after the chicken died, so I tried it one more time with a different chicken. And you know? It just wasn't the same. It really wasn't. I had wondered, and then I knew. That black chicken was special. That chicken had it. And...there it is.

For All That She Was, The Black Chicken Lives On in Every Work that We Do Here.

That's the story behind the name of my publishing label: BLACK CHICKEN UNLIMITED (BCU) : The Exclusively Indie Publishing Roost for Most Curious Bk-Bk-Bk-Books.

Copyright and Trademark A.J. Schaar 2001, both the publishing label Black Chicken Unlimited and the act known as The Black Chicken.

IT'S THE BLACK CHICKEN!

HERE! NOW!