STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — This week marks the end of an era in our backyard — and in our food lives. After nearly two decades of raising chickens, we’ve said goodbye to Linda, our last remaining hen. A vivacious Rhode Island Red with the soul of a Golden Retriever, Linda passed peacefully in her sleep earlier this week. She was 11.
Now, I feel what you’re thinking: “This is just a chicken.” But Linda wasn’t just any bird. She was a garden buddy, a feathered force of urban nature and a dedicated egg layer. In fact, she was roosting on an egg on her final day. Now, that’s commitment.
While I weep in my wine, you’re welcome to cry — or cackle. Maybe you’ll empathize if you’ve ever raised chickens, or if you’re the granola, Greenmarket type who connects with compost and can’t look at spiders without thinking of “Charlotte’s Web.” Any which way you slice it, Linda brought us joy.
Linda was also a survivor. She outwitted raccoons, dodged hawks from Silver Lake Golf Course, and once shrugged off a full-blown police incident. That happened when her flamboyant coop-mate, Tina Turner, escaped and wandered into a neighbor’s yard. Someone called 911. The responding officers looked like they’d been confronted by a crocodile. No one was harmed. Linda barely blinked.
She had refined tastes, too. Cold grapes in summer. Hot rice in winter. Live worms year-round. And dried mealworms? Pure ecstasy. I still have a sack of them. It’s one of those weird leftovers you don’t know what to do with—like questionably moldy blue cheese or a partially eaten, prime piece of steak your sick kid left on his plate…