A lot of people living in small spaces have chickens these days. In Craig, Prince of Wales Island’s answer to a “big city,” you can have chickens in your back yard, as long as you don’t have any roosters.

I grew up on a family farm in Virginia, and our main cash crop was eggs, hence the three or four thousand chickens that we had at any given time. We had three long, single-storied buildings with rows of wooden cubicles along the sides for the ladies to lay their eggs. At the time, many of the larger farms in the area kept their chickens in small wire cages for their entire lives. My Dad said that a chicken’s only form of recreation is a dust bath, and it would be a shame to take that away.

As a child I feared the chickens. We kids had chores in the form of feeding and gathering eggs after school. Feeding was scary because the chickens would chase me until I was able to distract them by getting feed into the first few troughs. Gathering eggs was scary because you had to reach right under the chickens, and they would puff up and make threatening noises and sometimes peck the back of your hands. We each had a “chicken stick,” with which we would (gently) trap the chicken’s head against the side of the box so we could steal her eggs unscathed.

When I was teaching school in the early nineties, a student told me that she had, as a four-year-old, been “violently attacked by chickens.” She showed me the cluster of fine scars around her eyes. Chickens are also hard on each other: get injured, and your sisters will peck you to death. Neither are they particularly smart: scare them and they will “hit the ceiling,” which is exactly what it sounds like. They will also pile up in the corners and smother their less fortunate sisters at the bottom of the pile.

So, how do I feel about chickens now? I have made several visits to Kauai, where the feral chickens do good work as advocates for their kind. There are chickens everywhere you go, running around in Costco parking lot, looking for treats under restaurant tables, and hanging out at the beach with their families. There are T-shirts made in their honor. Does this mean I want chickens in my back yard? Maybe someday, but not just yet.