El­speth Dun­can

Turn­ing off the main road on­to Store Bay Lo­cal Road, I see a small black thing in the mid­dle of the junc­tion.It is a ba­by chick­en, wet and bedrag­gled from re­cent rain­fall. It is con­fused, try­ing to cross what must be, from its per­spec­tive, a nev­er-end­ing ex­panse of as­phalt.See­ing no sign of a moth­er or oth­er ba­by chicks, and not want­i­ng the chick to get crushed, I stop my car and pick it up.

My dog Venus, who is in the car with me, sniffs cu­ri­ous­ly at the black fuzzball in my hand. Ever since her first chick­en catch she has, like many dogs, loved to chase and some­times bite these com­mon­ly-seen birds. But with this lit­tle chick, she is cu­ri­ous rather than preda­to­ry.Back at home, the chick­en seeks warmth and finds it with Venus.Chirp­ing loud­ly, she cud­dles against the warm ca­nine body. With sur­pris­ing ma­ter­nal gen­tle­ness, Venus pro­ceeds to lick the small crea­ture's face, al­low­ing it to nuz­zle against her chest.

I name her "Mag­net," amused by the way she sticks to Venus and fol­lows her around. I keep watch over them since Venus, al­ways ea­ger to play, could eas­i­ly crush the chick with just one friend­ly touch of her paw.As I write this, some days lat­er, Mag­net sits peace­ful­ly on my foot, chirp­ing loud­ly. She is a 'yardie', ac­cord­ing to friend of mine who once owned chick­ens and had a spe­cial in­door hen called "Bok­bok" (named af­ter the nois­es she made).

Yardies are the can-sur­vive-any­thing com­mon chick­ens seen around To­ba­go–peck­ing around in gar­dens, lay­ing eggs in pub­lic places, bustling through Scar­bor­ough, traips­ing through the air­port near the sug­ar cake ven­dors, tra­vers­ing the streets with string of chicks in tow and coura­geous­ly es­cap­ing on­com­ing traf­fic...or not (hence the oc­ca­sion­al sight of black feath­ery pan­cakes on the as­phalt).

The gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion ba­si­cal­ly ig­nores the chick­ens, which are quite like the avian ver­sion of stray dogs...but for some peo­ple, these com­mon crea­tures be­come lov­ing and in­tel­li­gent pets.For three months, be­fore giv­ing him away to a small fam­i­ly, Gi­an­car­lo Lals­ingh of SOS (Save Our Sea Tur­tles) To­ba­go, en­joyed hav­ing "KFC", a chick­en, as a feath­ered friend. The bedrag­gled KFC had wan­dered in­to Gi­an­car­lo's liv­ing room and, af­ter be­ing fed and giv­en wa­ter, de­cid­ed to stay.

"Chicks bond very quick­ly to any per­son or an­i­mal they per­ceive as their 'moth­er'," Gi­an­car­lo says, "so he would fol­low me every­where in the house and gar­den. He need­ed to be taught how to for­age on his own, so I would sit in the gar­den, and "peck" at things with my hands, to show him what he could eat, and soon enough he was for­ag­ing on his own."Some of KFC's favourite foods in­clud­ed un­salt­ed peanuts, lentils with hot pep­per, coo-coo and corn pie.

"Ba­si­cal­ly any­thing he would see me eat­ing, he want­ed to try," Gi­an­car­lo re­veals."But I had to be care­ful not to give him cer­tain foods that can be poi­so­nous to chick­ens."On evenings KFC would come in­doors and jump on­to Gi­an­car­lo's lap to be pat­ted and scratched like a dog un­til he fell asleep.Beau­ti­ful re­la­tion­ships are formed and pow­er­ful lessons learned when we em­brace each oth­er's dif­fer­ences�shar­ing love across race, gen­der, re­li­gion, sta­tus and species.

"As Trin­bag­o­ni­ans we look at chick­ens as, and par­don the pun, a box of KFC or Roy­al Cas­tle," Gi­an­car­lo says."What I re­alised is that chick­ens are in­ter­est­ing, quirky, full of per­son­al­i­ty and very lov­ing an­i­mals. Be­cause of my ex­pe­ri­ence, I've stopped eat­ing chick­en and eggs. I even­tu­al­ly hope to stop eat­ing meat al­to­geth­er."