He’s a Keeper

Keeper is changing colour.

The soft yellow feathers of the teeny tiny chick who arrived here not so long ago are slowly surrendering to russets, browns and burnt orange. An autumnal palette emerging feather by feather on a little bird whose fortunes, too, have changed with the season.

For while Keeper’s life began in adversity, I am determined that is not where his story will end.

He was the smallest of the chickens rescued from a derelict house, their salvation coming in the unlikely form of a kind-hearted demolition worker who refused to bulldoze the building when he discovered animals had been left behind by squatters.

Keeper was heartbreakingly thin. His keel bone rose razor sharp beneath pale flesh, and we feared he was perilously close to joining the little bodies already scattered across the floor.

Yet even then, Keeper had something to say.

When the other chickens were rounded up to be rehomed, our head count came up one short. Surely we had miscounted.

Then, a chirp.

Faint, but insistent. And somehow our smallest charge had managed to wedge himself behind a wall in the barn. A drill, a screwdriver and a firm belief that no one gets left behind later, a very dusty little Keeper was clasped safely between my hands.

“Oh, he’s so teeny tiny,” I cooed.

And looking down at this almost weightless scrap of feathers, I worried that yet another journey might simply be one journey too many.

So he stayed and earned his name.

And goodness, has he made staying worthwhile.

Keeper has become an adventurer, discovering the finest place from which to survey his rapidly expanding kingdom was atop my head. He has become a landscaper, although Jessica may use a different job description for his enthusiastic rearrangement of her garden. Come nightfall, however, he is a chameleon, melting into the pot plants so completely that I invariably convince myself he has escaped.

And he has become a king, having recently declared my one and only recliner his throne.

Somewhere amongst all of this, he also become my best friend. Well, one of them. This one just happens to come under the guise of feathers.

And yesterday, Keeper found his voice.

Though I use the term somewhat generously.

The magnificent baritone crow I suspect he believes he produced was, in reality, a peculiar little croak that sent me searching his yard for whatever strange creature had apparently moved in.

Until he did it again.

There he stood.

Feathery feet planted. Chest puffed. Every tiny bit of him announcing to the world: I am  here.

And perhaps that is Keeper’s greatest transformation of all.

Not yellow into russet or frightened chick into garden landscaper, head-top adventurer or self-appointed king. But a little life once so precarious now standing firmly in the middle of his own tomorrow.

And, it would seem, firmly in the middle of my heart.

There will always be days when the world feels impossibly heavy. Days when the sadness seems louder than the hope. And then a little rooster croaks. A feather changes colour. A life that almost wasn’t, is.

And somehow, that is enough to remind me to keep going.

After all, he’s a Keeper.