Brenda Bellinger

Serving Chicken

Serving Chicken

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Outside my kitchen window, falling leaves gather over the crude nest claimed by a chicken last June. I can no longer see the soft white under-feathers she left behind. I imagine this wouldn’t have seemed at all remarkable to the woman who stood here, at the sink, in the 1930s when this simple home was the heart of the Central Egg Company in Petaluma, California. A rusted remnant of that sign still clings to the main warehouse building. The last of the chicken houses dropped to its knees long ago.