By Georgia Grellier
Welcome back to Story Time with Georgia, where I relay various stories from members of the CC community, and also sometimes just me. Email me if you have a story and I will maybe consider making you famous.
Who: James ’21
When: Block 2, 2019
What:
During Block 2 this fall, James ’21 was having a very normal day. The main item on his agenda was working on a paper for his class, and since he is a diligent student he even decided to go to his professor’s office to go over ideas and get feedback on his draft. At first, “the meeting was like any other meeting,” said James. “We talked about better resources to look at and other stuff.” The meeting progressed uneventfully — that is, until they were wrapping up, and James had a question about his final.
Originally, the final presentations for the course were scheduled to take place at the professor’s house, where the professor had many farm animals for the class to play with afterward. James realized that they would now be taking place on campus instead, and was slightly intrigued. Out of pure curiosity, James asked his professor about it: “She looked at me kinda sad,” said James, “and was like, ‘yeah well it’s not a good time right now.’” She went on to explain that she needed to take care of her pet chicken, who, sadly, had recently been diagnosed with cancer.
James’ professor then stood up and walked over to a chair, which James only then noticed contained a basket with a blanket over it. His professor proceeded to lift the blanket, revealing a visibly lifeless chicken lying in the basket beneath.
Rather than accepting that the circle of life had clearly occurred in her very office, “[The professor] starts shaking it aggressively” to check for responses from the chicken. In my personal experience, there is really no social precedent for this kind of thing, and I’d imagine James felt the same way because he just kind of stood there during this whole process.
After a few seconds of chicken-shaking, the professor turned to James and said, “She’s dead.”
YIKES.
James hadn’t anticipated encountering death that afternoon, so this deceased chicken was somewhat of a shock. “During our meeting her chicken just fully died in her office,” said James (It didn’t even partially die, it fully died).
Personally, this situation sounds incredibly strange and overwhelming, but James remained admirably calm. He uttered a sincere “My condolences” before skrrt skrrt-ing out of there. R.I.P. chicken, you are missed.
Takeaway: Chickens are so cute, so this is actually super sad.