NEW ORLEANS (AP) - This is a story about fluffy little chickens living their best lives in Lakeview. It’s a story about predators, canine heroism and amputation. It’s about coincidence, karma and a young couple who’ve found a kooky obsession to share.
Brianne Whelan makes Greek yogurt parfaits for her four hens, with banana, chia seeds and assorted berries, just like brunch at a downtown hotel. When it’s hot, she freezes watermelon for them as a refreshing afternoon snack.
“It’s like sorbet,” she said.
Brianne’s four hens live in a coop that looks like a Cape Cod cottage. The birds have private roosting boxes inside, overlooking a spacious living room. There’s art on the walls. Outside, the coop is festooned with pink and white artificial flowers, like a wedding cake.
On special occasions, Brianne dresses up her brood with bow ties or ballerina tutus. At last summer’s luau, the chickens wore leis.
They’re not your usual yard birds. Brianne raises a type of chicken called a silkie. They’re small and seem plump because of their coating of downy, furlike feathers. Their little heads are tufted with shaggy plumage, like Joan Jett circa 1988.
Those fluffy feathers can sometimes become grimy. So Brianne bathes her birds. It’s a four-step process. First, the hens soak in plain water, then they take a plunge in a bucket of suds, then back in the plain water for a final rinse. Since silkies are especially susceptible to cold, Brianne blow-dries them. Her husband, Chris, sometimes helps with the blow-drying. There’s video to prove it.
In many other ways, Brianne and Chris seem perfectly normal. They are both 30 years old. She is from St. Bernard Parish; he hails from Metairie. She is a digital marketing professional, he a CPA.
They met in a finance class at LSU, married in 2016 and traveled the world on a honeymoon backpacking adventure. They lived and worked in Lower Manhattan for several years before resettling in Louisiana.
The Whelan’s life histories include several details that seem to have contributed to their current cackle-centric state.
At LSU, Chris found a campus job in the poultry department of the College of Agriculture. It was just for the spending money, he said. He had no interest in animal husbandry, yet he found himself in the harried position of wrangling excitable birds during livestock shows.
He never in a million years imagined having a chicken as a pet. No way.
“I thought I was closing the door on the chicken world,” Chris said, “but here I am. It’s cosmic justice. Never say never.”
As a kid, Brianne wanted to be a vet. She had innumerable pets and became a volunteer at the St. Bernard Parish Animal Shelter. She learned to gather hen’s eggs on a family friend’s farm.
In college, Brianne studied Mandarin Chinese and spent six months in China. Coincidentally, silkie chickens are said to have originated in China.
Chris is allergic to cats, which made the construction of an elaborate backyard coop and adoption of unusual chickens seem entirely logical … to Brianne.
“When she said she wanted to expand our family, I never expected this,” Chris recalled.
“I was literally shocked when he said OK,” Brianne said.
In the months since her first silkie eggs arrived, Brianne has learned that she is really, really good at hatching and rearing chicks. Silkie hatchlings are supposed to have a high mortality rate. Hers don’t. She currently has five palm-sized chicks as well as her adult hens. She sold the extra chicks to help cover the veterinary bills.
Which leads us to the dramatic life-and-death part of the story.
Brianne and Chris were hanging around the backyard pool, watching the chickens and waiting for a delivery of Buffalo wings to arrive. That’s right, the Whelans eat chicken. They also eat the eggs their hens lay.
Anyway, they were hanging around the pool, when a hungry hawk dived out of the clear sky and sank its talons into a silkie named Mutha Goose. Of course, they have names. The hawk lifted the hen off the ground and prepared to carry her off into the wild blue yonder.
But, as the murderous hawk flapped skyward, Royal, the family dog, rushed to the rescue, scaring the predator into dropping its prey.
That moment of adrenalized desperation is when Chris had the epiphany that he was as devoted to the chickens as Brianne. He placed a frantic phone call to a nearby animal hospital, where an operating room was immediately prepared.
Chris drove the bleeding bird to the waiting vet, who was able to save Mutha Goose’s life, if not her wing, which had to be removed.
“We’ve become bird-watchers ever since,” Chris said, surveying the sky for menace.
Chris said the luxurious coop, the fruit and yogurt brunches, the lamplit hatchling cage in a living room closet and the chicken bath buckets were entirely predictable from the beginning.
“If Brianne was going to come up with the idea of raising chickens, it was going to be the Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel of raising chickens,” he said.
As a future addition to her tongue-in-cheek poultry obsession, Brianne said she has been considering an Amazon.com purchase.
“I’m looking at this little stroller to take the chickens for a walk around the neighborhood,” she said.
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This story has been corrected to show the dateline should be New Orleans and not Lakeview, La.
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