They call it – Anthony knew – the law of karma: what goes around comes around, for each action there is an equal reaction, the chickens come home to roost.
It might have been Aesop – or Malcolm X – who said that evil wishes, like chickens, come home to roost. It seemed to Anthony’s tender heart that there were few things less like an evil wish than a hen. Maybe hens were remote little dinosaurs with scaly legs and beady, snake-like eyes, reptilian and unforgiving, but they were also, surely, fluffy and spherical and even Jesus H. Christ – who was a dab hand at the old metaphor – could think of nothing more maternal than a chook: ‘how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not’.
Anthony had included Biology in his stage-one university studies. The day that he realised this had been a mistake was in the Biol-105 ‘lab’ – the day on which each student was given an egg.
The course was called ‘Biology and Man’ (on the first day of the course, the professor had told the students proudly how he had earlier seen off the angry lesboes from the English department who came to complain). Perhaps only a man would think what they did that day in Biol-105 worthwhile.
Step by step the professor guided the class through the process.
Each student chipped open his or her egg and carefully extracted the speck at the end of the yolk and manoeuvered it into the warm saline solution on the microscope slide.
Down there you could see some kind of rhythmic pulsation. An ever-slowing movement. Another drop of warm water and it sped up.
A chicken two millimetres across has a beating heart.
This was education? Over in the Classics department, folks were discussing Plato!
In all the time that this process took, it had not occurred to Anthony to wonder how it would end. He waited at the end of the class for the explanation of how to get the chookie back into its protective egg. The explanation did not come.
The eggs went in the bin; the hens went down the drain.
Literally, those chickens would never flutter up into some embracing tree to roost with quiet, contented, evening murmuring. Figuratively – that’s some bad effen karma to be paid off, dude.
Twenty-four years later, Anthony was crossing the courtyard of a Buddhist temple in Bangkok. The sign read ‘ninety bhat’ – a little over three New Zealand dollars. He bought the little wooden cage of tiny songbirds. Smaller than sparrows they were – four small and bewildered imprisoned birds. He carried the cage through to in front of the huge statue of the Buddha and slid up the door of the tiny prison. A moment’s hesitation, and out they flew – the four of them together describing a vast arc up and away into the blue sky.
‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
Barnaby McBryde
It might have been Aesop – or Malcolm X – who said that evil wishes, like chickens, come home to roost. It seemed to Anthony’s tender heart that there were few things less like an evil wish than a hen. Maybe hens were remote little dinosaurs with scaly legs and beady, snake-like eyes, reptilian and unforgiving, but they were also, surely, fluffy and spherical and even Jesus H. Christ – who was a dab hand at the old metaphor – could think of nothing more maternal than a chook: ‘how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not’.
Anthony had included Biology in his stage-one university studies. The day that he realised this had been a mistake was in the Biol-105 ‘lab’ – the day on which each student was given an egg.
The course was called ‘Biology and Man’ (on the first day of the course, the professor had told the students proudly how he had earlier seen off the angry lesboes from the English department who came to complain). Perhaps only a man would think what they did that day in Biol-105 worthwhile.
Step by step the professor guided the class through the process.
Each student chipped open his or her egg and carefully extracted the speck at the end of the yolk and manoeuvered it into the warm saline solution on the microscope slide.
Down there you could see some kind of rhythmic pulsation. An ever-slowing movement. Another drop of warm water and it sped up.
A chicken two millimetres across has a beating heart.
This was education? Over in the Classics department, folks were discussing Plato!
In all the time that this process took, it had not occurred to Anthony to wonder how it would end. He waited at the end of the class for the explanation of how to get the chookie back into its protective egg. The explanation did not come.
The eggs went in the bin; the hens went down the drain.
Literally, those chickens would never flutter up into some embracing tree to roost with quiet, contented, evening murmuring. Figuratively – that’s some bad effen karma to be paid off, dude.
Twenty-four years later, Anthony was crossing the courtyard of a Buddhist temple in Bangkok. The sign read ‘ninety bhat’ – a little over three New Zealand dollars. He bought the little wooden cage of tiny songbirds. Smaller than sparrows they were – four small and bewildered imprisoned birds. He carried the cage through to in front of the huge statue of the Buddha and slid up the door of the tiny prison. A moment’s hesitation, and out they flew – the four of them together describing a vast arc up and away into the blue sky.
‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
Barnaby McBryde
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