Another Way to Say Hello

It’s Letter Writing Week. This is my favorite to date. I love to write letters; it’s my hobby, my passion, my pastime. I write a lot of letters and what I hear most often from people is:

“I’d write but I don’t know what to write about.”
Write about your day, something you did, something you saw. You’re not being graded and you’re not writing a novel, so try to relax. Really. It’s simply another way to say hello.

And close behind that is:

“But my handwriting, it’s awful.”
Well, it’s probably not as bad as you think it is, and really, your handwriting is what makes your letters most special. And what makes it even more compelling is that we can often recognize who a letter is from without looking at the return address. Your handwriting is as unique as you are and that’s what makes all the difference.

One morning I was getting ready to write when this happened:

Chicken TV
It was early in the day and I was collecting stationery, stamps, and a decent pen to write a letter to my in-laws when I heard the neighbor’s chickens. At least two of them were squawking, and it was loud. So loud that I stopped what I was doing to peek out the kitchen window to be sure they were safe inside the coop. They were.

When I settled in to write, I wrote about the chickens:

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The neighbor’s chickens are squawking. The coop sits at the low end of the backyard just over the property line.

We can see them from the back porch, and in the evening when we’re out there, we like to watch them—we call it chicken TV.

One chicken goes in the coop, they all go in. One comes out, they all come out. And peck, peck, peck. There’s Ziggy (the hen with orange feathers), and Jimmy (the speckled one), and three others, and they spend a good part of the day circling in and out of the coop. Peck, peck, pecking. In and out, in and out, peck, peck, peck. Maybe that’s where hen-pecked comes from!

When they lay eggs, they squawk. One echoing the other. One egg, squaawk; two eggs, squaaawk; then all together--SQUAaaAWK, SQUAAaaaaaAWK, SQUAAaaaaaaaaaaaAWK!

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The chicken letter was a big hit and it gave us plenty to talk about when we visited a few weeks later. And that’s something to squawk about!