Ridiculously photogenic pullet
Coco, this afternoon. She’s lost all her baby fluff and is starting to look like a proper little chicken. Isn’t she a beauty?
This one’s Uncle B’s. He’s always wanted a little black hen. He has something stuck in the back of his brain about a little black hen in folklore.
So I twiddled around the net for a while looking for little black hens. Turns out there are a lot of them in poems and images. My favorite was a song called Li’l Black Hen by a New Orleans bluesman. And the bluesman’s name was….wait for it…Coco Robicheaux.
He was singing a song about his grandmother’s – his Granmere Philomene’s – favorite chicken, La Petite Poule Noire. Her Little Black Hen. He says his grandma loved that hen, carried it around like a cat, because the tiny bird took on all the hoodoo, all the bad stuff that was floating around, absorbed it, reflected it, and protected the family. The chicken was the family’s talisman and guardian, and while it lived they felt safe.
Yeah. Huh. Uncle B just pulled the name Coco out of thin air and attached it to the chicken. As Monsieur Robicheaux was a medicine man and died in 2011, I am going to assume our bird is him reincarnated. Because, really, that’s the only explanation that makes any sense.
You know, I bet we have 20% less hoodoo already! Thanks, Coco!
Good weekend, folks.
July 12, 2013 — 11:10 pm
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