Mrs. Foster certainly wasn’t afraid of dying; it didn’t matter that she was seventy-eight, or that she’d been diagnosed with a serious illness, or that she’d just fallen off the roof of a chicken coop. She was simply too busy to worry about death.
The nurses at the hospital were not all that interested in determining whether or not she would survive the injuries she sustained. Perhaps her attitude had rubbed off on them. Whatever the reason, the only thing they seemed to want to know was why she’d been on top of a chicken coop at two in the morning, in twenty-degree weather, covered in feathers and wearing nothing but a tan tank top and running shorts.
I don’t blame them. I’d be curious too.
“To call the chickens, of course!” she replied. “Why else?”
  • • •
It was midnight when I awoke to a banging. Half-asleep, I dragged myself out of bed and down the stairs, almost tripping on some unidentifiable object. I momentarily blinded myself by turning on the hallway light. The banging came again. The door. It was the door. Those dogs needed to learn to bark. More banging. Jesus, at this time of night? I rubbed my eyes and swung open the door. Standing before me was Mrs. Foster, in all her glory, wearing a bright yellow jacket and hiking boots. Her gray hair was disheveled, and the look in her eyes gave her the appearance of a serial killer. Or maybe it was the butcher knife in her hand.
“I’m here about your dogs,” she said. I blinked hard a couple times to make sure I was seeing straight. It was not uncommon to be interrupted in the middle of the night by Mrs. Foster banging on your door about some “problem” or another, but that didn’t make it any easier to wake up.
“Why don’t you get dressed,” she continued. I looked down and realized I had nothing on but my boxers and wool socks. I rushed upstairs and pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt. When I returned to the kitchen, she was inspecting my wedding album.
“So, you wanted to talk to me about–”
“Your dogs, yes,” she said, flipping through the book. “We’ve got a little … problem.”
Of course we did.
“You’re not butchering my dogs, are you?” I laughed nervously, eying the knife. She did not join me.
“No,” she replied. “Of course not. Now, listen, we have a chicken problem.”
“I thought it was a dog problem.”
“It is. Didn’t I just say that? Go get your jacket.”
“What’s going on?” I pulled my jacket on.
“The chickens are missing.”
“We don’t have chickens, Mrs. Foster.”
“I’m not talking about your chickens.”
I sighed. “Which chickens then?”
There were a few people in town with chicken coops. she was not one of them, but – of course – it was still her business. I mean, she was Mrs. Foster.
“All of them. Hurry. Don’t you have a whistle?”
“For what?”
“Your dogs.”
“But you said this was a chicken … oh, never mind. The dogs come when I call. They’re asleep in the garage.”
“Not anymore. They were hungry; you forgot to feed them. They got out when I gave them some chow. But now we have to find the chickens.”
She was right; I had forgotten to feed them. How she knew that, I’ll never know. I half-jogged to the garage and sure enough, my two Irish setters were nowhere to be found. There was, however, a big bowl of dog food.
“Come on,” she called from the road. Surely the weather was too cold for an old woman to be running around town. A different woman would realize that; a different woman would stay home. But not Mrs. Foster.
“Should we take the car?” I asked.
“No, we don’t want to scare them.” I didn’t ask whether she was talking about the dogs or the chickens. I followed, crunching through the frosted lawn.
“Mrs. Foster, did you break into my house to feed the dogs?”
“Of course, they were hungry.”
“Listen, I appreciate your concern for the well being of my dogs, but-”
“I’m not concerned about their well being anymore. It’s the chickens I’m worried about.”
We eventually came to Dave and Danni’s house. Mrs. Foster crossed their yard without hesitation.
“Mrs. Foster, don’t you think we should tell them about the chickens?”
“And say what? You let your dogs chase them away? I don’t think they’d be happy about that.”
“But I-”
“No buts. It’s the middle of the night; we should just bring back the chickens before they notice they’re gone.”
In the backyard, past the grill and picnic table, lay their triangular chicken coop – empty.
“What happened?” I whispered.
“Your dogs,” she responded, loudly. “I was on my way to return that butcher knife when I stopped to check on the chickens.” I tried to gesture to the house to get her to be quiet, but to no avail. “One of them was sick,” she continued, “so I decided to take it to see my veterinarian friend, Dr. Terry. Then I realized your dogs hadn’t been fed, so I borrowed a bowl for the food and walked over. But when I walked into the garage to feed your dogs, they saw the chickens and went bonkers. Anyway, I started running back here to try to put the hen back in the coop, but the dogs were following me and when the chickens saw them they just kind of …” She made a semi-chicken noise and pointed in the general direction in which they ran.
“And the dogs?” I continued whispering, hoping she would get the hint.
“Went right after them. I chased them, but I’m not as young as I used to be. So I headed to the Bensons’ place to see if they had been there. I looked inside their coop and their chickens were inside, but one of them seemed to be very alarmed. So I opened the coop up to check, and they all ran out. I turned around to see that one of your dogs was behind me the whole time!”
“What about Freddy’s?” It was the only other house nearby with chickens.
“We’re heading there now; the dogs might have gotten in his coop too.”
“I don’t think-”
“Be quiet, we’re wasting time. We can go to Freddy’s house first, then find the missing chickens. If I have you here to call the dogs and me to call the chickens, we should have them all before dawn.” I thought about work the next day. But there was no questioning Mrs. Foster. “Now go on, start calling! They could be anywhere ….”
And so we headed to Freddy’s, me calling or whistling every so often.
“I know how to get my dogs, but how are you going to call the chickens?”
“Oh, trust me – go on, keep calling – I’ll do it.” Chicken calling, I thought, might not be the most efficient way to find them. But the resolve in her eye made me keep my mouth shut.
When we got to Freddy’s house, his coop was more covered than the others, which made it harder to see inside. The door was closed, so I assumed the chickens were still there.
“I don’t think the dogs chased these out.”
“I don’t think so either, but I should check anyway. There seems to be some sort of chicken bug going around.”
“Mrs. Foster,” I started to say, when I heard a sound from behind me. I drew in a breath and turned, expecting to see Freddy. But instead was a large white rooster. I froze. I stared at it, and it stared back with its black, beady eyes. The thing made a little clucking sound. Then it stepped back, and threw back its head.
“No no no no no,” I whispered, but nothing I could say would have stopped the deafening crow that came out of that thing’s throat. Almost immediately, the porch light at Freddy’s came on, and, although I knew him quite well, and probably could have explained why I was in his backyard with Mrs. Foster talking to a chicken, instead, I ran.
I was a couple houses away when I turned to see Mrs. Foster still by the house, a look of concern on her face. That couldn’t be a good sign. I stood behind a bush and waited for her. I watched
Freddy’s lawn for movement, but no Freddy. Probably a motion detector light. Freddy shouldn’t have thought there was anything out of place about a rooster in his backyard.
When Mrs. Foster was close enough, she said, “We need to round up these chickens.”
“And my dogs.”
“Why don’t we head back toward the park? I tell you: if I were a chicken, that’s where I’d go.”
“Are you sure that we shouldn’t get some help? Or wait until morning?”
“No, no. We don’t want to risk them getting hit by cars. We need to find them and put them all back.”
“But there’s only two of us.”
“I’ve caught more chickens than this by myself. Don’t worry. Just find your dogs, and we’ll be just fine. Go on, call them.” So I did.
At the park, “Do you see any?” she asked. I shook my head. It was only a moment before she disappeared behind the tree line by the creek. I whistled. After a moment, I heard a familiar bark and saw my dogs running toward me.
“There you are! C’mere!” I took their collars, but they were strong. I would need to take them back to the house. “Mrs. Foster!” She emerged from the trees.
“Oh, good, you found them.”
“I have to put them in the garage.”
They were riled up, but I fought them all the way back to the house and was able to put them in the garage. I walked back to the living room, deciding to look for something to catch chickens in.
I heard a sound from behind me.
“Do you mind if I borrow these?” I turned. It was Mrs. Foster, holding up a pair of my wife’s favorite jogging shorts from a pile of laundry.
“What – where did you come from?”
“I’d prefer to wear something warmer, but we haven’t much time. And anyway, everything else is too small for me. If you want me to catch these chickens, I wouldn’t say no.”
I sighed, and she pulled on the shorts under her skirt. I grabbed a fishing net, and we left the house once more.
“We just have to find one,” she said. “Where there’s one, there’ll be more.” So, we spent the next who knows how many hours climbing through bushes and sneaking around our neighbors’ backyards. It was hard to spot anything in the dark, let alone a chicken. After more searching, I heard Mrs. Foster whispering from nearby.
“Chicken,” she called. “Come quick, chicken!” I turned to the sound and saw Mrs. Foster, but no chicken.
“Where?” I asked. She pointed across the street. Sure enough, on a corner by the creek, there was a red hen. “What do we do?” She pointed to my net. Slowly, I crossed the road. I heard Mrs. Foster’s light footsteps behind me. I approached the hen, and when I seemed close enough to catch it, I waited. It watched me. I stood there for what felt like an eternity, staring at this chicken, the chicken staring back. It glanced away for a moment; I moved my foot to get a better stance. When it did not look back, I started lowering the net. I must’ve been a meter away when it looked up at me. What’cha doing? It seemed to ask. I thought we had a thing going.
Sorry, chicken.
The net flew down. Chickens, as I should have been aware, make quite a racket. I looked around, thinking of all the neighbors I might be waking. The other thing I overlooked, though, was the fact that although chickens may not be the smartest animals in the world, they are very good at getting away. So when I started to turn the net to lift it, it flapped its way right out of there.
“No!” I cried. The next thing I knew, Mrs. Foster and I were running after the chicken at full speed – although as a seventy-eight-year-old woman and a man holding an oversized fishing net, that wasn’t very fast. And this chicken was fast. We tried to corner it by the creek, but after stopping for a moment, it ran past the net and toward the main road – and the forest.
“Don’t let it get to the road!” Mrs. Foster called. She took its left flank and I took the right, both trying to overtake it before it reached the road. We weren’t successful. As it ran, it turned and saw me, stopped, then turned and ran toward Mrs. Foster in a panic. She froze and looked me in the eye. Taking this as my cue, I threw myself down on the ground, arm extended. The net came down. For a moment, there was silence, and I worried that maybe I had hit it too hard and killed the poor thing. But a bit of clucking eased my worries. I lifted my head from the mud, and saw that in the net was a fat red chicken. I laughed.
“I caught it!”
Mrs. Foster smiled.
“Wonderful. Now, let’s get this little one back into its coop so we can call the others. And don’t lose it this time!” I nodded. Mrs. Foster reached in and took the chicken out with both hands.
“Which coop is this one from?”
“Dave and Danni’s. I’m almost positive.”
I didn’t know any better, so I followed her to their house. She opened the coop, and put the hen inside. When she didn’t close it, I did, and looked up to see her taking off her jacket.
“What are you doing? It’s freezing!”
“I have to call the chickens. Didn’t I say that already? They don’t like bright colors. I hadn’t planned on calling chickens today, you see.” She proceeded to take off her skirt, revealing my wife’s running shorts. When she handed me the jacket and the skirt, I noticed the feathers in her hair. Then she put a foot up on the side of the coop.
“What are you doing now?”
“Climbing the coop. How are they supposed to see me if I’m on the ground?”
And with that, she was on top of the coop and began crowing. It went on for a good thirty seconds. Then, she lost her footing and came tumbling down.
“Mrs. Foster!” I called. “Are you okay?” I kneeled at her side. “Can you sit up?”
“I don’t think so. You should call someone, but deal with those chickens first.” Before I could ask what chickens she meant, I heard the shuffle of wings and clucking. I looked up just in time to see a stampede of chickens running toward us from all directions.
“I’m fine for the moment, dear. Just get them in the coop.” A man who has just seen a seventy-eight-year-old woman fall from the roof of a chicken coop does not generally think to shepherd a flock of chickens into a coop. “The redder ones are Dave and Danni’s. The multicolored ones are the Bensons’.” I squinted in the moonlight, trying to make out their colors. It took a good few minutes, but I finally got all of the “redder” ones in the coop. The others just kind of clucked around Mrs. Foster, who was now sitting.
“Now what?”
“Now, we take these to the Bensons.”
“But, Mrs. Foster, you just-”
“No buts. We can’t just leave these chickens here. And besides, now that I’ve called them, they’ll follow me. And we don’t want them following me to the doctor, do we?”
“Well no, but you aren’t-”
“If it makes you feel better, you can call now and have them meet us there.” I thought about trying to make her stay put, but the look in her eye told me to do otherwise.
After I called an ambulance, I turned and saw Mrs. Foster was standing, surrounded by the Bensons’ chickens. As we walked down the street, the flock followed us. At the Bensons’, we ushered them into the coop as we heard the sirens approaching.
  • • •
People of the town would sometimes find that their tablecloths had been washed, folded, and placed on their front steps; that their living room had been rearranged; that their dogs had been fed; or that their chickens had been swapped with the neighbors’. But no matter how many times she woke you up in the middle of the night, invaded your privacy, or told you everything that you were doing wrong, no one told Mrs. Foster to stop. Perhaps because they sensed she had a little magic in her, or perhaps because she was the most human of us all. Whatever the case, no matter the crazy stunts she pulled, everyone visited her that week.
Mrs. Foster wasn’t afraid of dying. She wasn’t afraid of death, either. I’m sure of that. Because she knew she couldn’t die – not really. No one who has lived that much, who has elbowed her way into that many lives, can ever truly die.