When I was five, I had an experience that marked me for life. Pathe News sent a photographer from New York to Savannah to take a picture of a chicken of mine. This chicken, a buff Cochin Bantam, had the distinction of being to walk either forward of backward. Her fame had spread through the press and by the time she reached the attention of Pathe News, I suppose there was nowhere left for her to go - forward or backward. Shortly after that she died, as now seems fitting.
Flannery O’Connor, “The King of the Birds,” in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, 3.
You can see a video of Mary Flannery O’Connor and her chicken here.
(via habitofbeing)
