No amount of planning and no amount of forethought prepares you for life’s turns. Just around the corner a peculiar hobby, preposterous adventure, or a parade of poultry employs you. Serendipity tracks you down, like it or not. So never could I have imagined I would husband two hens, let alone become biographer of the world’s most famous chicken.
Of course, by now you’ve heard of Dee Dee, seen her on Facebook, and repeated stories of her near-death experiences. After all, she is famous, gossip fodder, and paparazzi bait.
She arrived unexpectedly on my birthday.
“I’m too tired to go out to dinner,” said my wife, returning from work, “so I stopped by KFC.”
Nancy held out a red and white bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. She hates fast-food chicken, and she secretly suspects Colonel Sanders’ heirs of fowl crimes. Nancy acted out of character patronizing the former Pepsi subsidiary. How odd!
Flustered, I said, “You didn’t have to do anything,” and I grabbed the bucket. Unusually light, the container made noise. Inside, I found two live chicks, sisters of the Orpington clan. Suddenly, life turned and assigned me a new role as a suburban farmer.
The chicks needed names. The outgoing, clumsy one, yellow and slight, earned the name Flip, a gender-neutral handle with a hint of in-your-face feminism.
Dee Dee, like the preponderance of American celebrities, inherited her name and fell into her fame by accident. A children’s book proposal sat on my desk about Dee Dee, a run-away chicken. I had been pondering book titles — Dee Dee, Henceforth Free — so I connected my new bird to the book’s protagonist and realized Dee Dee already had completed step one of the formula to quick celebrity status.
As socialites Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton know, the first step to achieving worldwide fame is to attach your inherited name to an outside event or circumstance, and then immediately embrace the ensuing popularity. Both women created sex tapes. Instead of hiding from them, they exploited their name and notoriety. Now they are both famous for just being infamous, their new businesses surviving artifacts of fame. Boasting nearly eighteen million Twitter followers, Kim offers to Tweet your message to the world for a mere ten thousand dollars. Paris will sell you perfume, boots, and watches. Her sales have topped the billion-dollar mark. So emulating several not-so-accomplished stars, Dee Dee decided to jump start her career with a book deal. She signed a contract to pose for pictures as the main character, Dee Dee. Step one to fame? Latch on to a moving train. Check.
Step two: celebrities require quirky personalities. If they were quiet, reserved, and normal, they would not stand out. Therefore, actor Tom Cruise thought it perfectly normal to perform an interpretative dance on Oprah’s couch. Movie star Alicia Silverstone felt comfortable telling her blog followers in a video that she feeds her son, Bear Blu, by chewing up his food herself and then putting it back in her son’s mouth. Yuck! Lindsay Lohan took the risk to steal jewelry and stall payments to her innkeeper. Boxer Mike Tyson thought it was just part of the game when he bit off his opponent’s ear. Perhaps Tyson took advice from heavy metal vocalist Ozzy Osbourne; the eccentric singer once visited the offices of a Los Angeles record producer, pulled a live dove out of his pocket, and bit off its head.
Dee Dee stands firmly against bird-on-bird violence, but she reveals her own quirks on occasion.
“Nancy, I think Dee Dee might be mentally ill,” I worried.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“She just sits there and won’t come out.”
“She’s just brooding,” said Nancy. “I think she wants babies.”
“Well, I took her out of the nest,” I explained. “Then she ran around in circles three times, clucked like crazy, and then pecked the dog on the nose.”
Ah! It all became clear. Dee Dee was performing the Tom Cruise interpretive dance. Step Two? Check.
The dog is not a danger to Dee Dee and her sister Flip. The fourteen-year-old bichon frisé took her obedience lessons to heart. She barks at the pair occasionally, but only because she wants to play. Her playful noise scares the birds, evidence that the cliché chicken — as a derogatory term for people who are easily frightened and afraid — is an accurate metaphor. One Saturday afternoon it became obvious Flip and Dee Dee found trouble. They were searching for worms among the blades of backyard grass. I stood with my back turned to them, donned in farming jeans, a shovel over my shoulder. Clucks raged. Bawks reverberated against the trees. Honks shot into the sky. I turned to see a diving hawk, flying so fast that his image was a blur. The wind of his wings pushed warm against my face. I heard the oh-so-silent bass of his feathers fanning the summer air.
My quick turnaround frightened the predator away, and finally, the hawk became a clear image as he sped away east, graceful and hungry. Meanwhile, Flip and Dee Dee took refuge under the deck, stretching their necks to giraffe proportions, trying to look tall and formidable. Still young and embracing her youthful adventures, Dee Dee managed to check step three to fame off her list: go through a near-death experience or a horrific trauma to mesmerize the masses on late night talk shows. Resisting the hawk, Dee Dee stashed away by default an NBC up-close-and-personal television script that would precede her eventual debut high-jump performance at the summer Olympics. She also earned the right to an appearance with Jimmy Fallon.
“What did you think when you saw those talons reaching for you?” Jimmy will ask.
“I was scared and let out a ‘cluck-you,’” Dee Dee will answer, “but I learned a valuable lesson. Eat like a soldier in Gideon’s army. Forage with one eye and scout with the other.”
Today Dee Dee owns a signature head move that delights press photographers. When she sees a shadow, she turns her head parallel to the ground. One eye looks straight up into the sky, the other directly down.
Vanity is step four on the road to fame. Dee Dee plays to her strengths. Some critics have described her as “matronly” and “plump,” but when she crosses the road, she waddles her hips with a swagger that Annette Funicello could never achieve. Her golden feathers glisten in the sunlight, a source of pride to her royal Orpington ancestors. Her brown eyes melt the hearts of Brazilian men. Stately tail feathers protect her delicate, velvety down, a covering so soft and beautiful that it serves Dee Dee as a plush pillow even in the rockiest of terrain.
American celebrities know they have to look good to maintain their popularity. They are vulnerable to facelifts and excessive hair coloring. However, a small physical flaw can become endearing, a unique trademark that fortifies their celebrity brand. Actress Jennifer Garner is beautiful, but suffers from brachymetatarsia, which, in non-technical language, translates into an odd, overlapping pinky toe. Celebrity Vince Vaughn is missing the tip of his thumb. Comedian Stephen Colbert sports a misshapen ear, the result of surgery for an ear tumor when he was ten. In winter months, Dee Dee suffers from a skin condition that puts a chalky white coat on her earlobes. She never spends any time looking in the mirror, so she has never let it bother her. Still, she preens constantly, putting on sufficient glamor for the camera in her own humble way. Put a check mark next to vanity, step four.
The final rung in the ladder to worldwide fame is to have a cause. It must simultaneously do good and push the star’s image to the forefront of global media. For Jane Fonda, opposition to the war in Viet Nam put her on the front pages of all the newspapers. The singer Sting co-founded the Rainforest Foundation and got press. Pierce Brosnan of James Bond fame fights the Navy’s sonar systems. He worries that the sounds harm whales and dolphins. Environmentalists love him. Dee Dee’s cause is organic food. She lays eggs —healthy, nutritious, and beautiful eggs in a light-brown shell. If she were to visit a neighbor’s house, she would lay an egg. When she is not showboating at a school assembly or off to a photo shoot, she will retreat and lay an egg. Every time she gives an egg away, she sparks a conversation. People talk about her and thank her for her organic diet of spiders, grass, and watermelon. Once, when she delivered a double yolk, the news spread on Facebook and Twitter. Step five? Complete.
One early evening, a rare break between Rotary appearances and radio interviews, Dee Dee strutted down from her nest just having delivered another low-cholesterol ovum. She waddled toward me and jumped upon the arm of a patio chair. I pulled out my camera, another chance for photos to illustrate the children’s book. Dee Dee flew up and wrapped her warm reptilian claws around my camera. Then she stooped her neck and gazed into my eyes as if to peck. Instead, she intimated her own insecurities: “Will I really be the world’s most famous chicken?”
“No amount of planning prepares you for life’s turns,” I said. “The secret, my dear hen, is to be yourself in your own yard. Be kind to your sister. Eat up the mosquitos. Cluck only after eight in the morning. No one can resist a well-mannered hen. Fame’s formula is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and a million Facebook ‘likes’ are just one good deed away.”
