“It’s hard to impress me with chicken,” said the officer, squinting under his cap in the afternoon sun of upstate New York, 1943. Back then, money wasn’t worth much unless it came in the form of something useful, Eggs, Firewood, and animals. People traded in things that mattered.

There was a young man who worked as the town’s paperboy, he lived alone in a small house with a sloping patch of land and a river that curled along the left side of his property. Every day, after hauling papers for nearly eleven hours, he’d sit on his front deck, watching the water roll by like clockwork. He believed the river had brought him peace. After one month, his boss handed him a gift, three chickens. He didn’t know the first thing about chickens. Let them loose in his house like dogs. They clucked, flapped, and made a mess of the floorboards while he sat outside, watching the river with his feet up. Still, they became part of the rhythm.

Then, one day, one of the chickens slipped into the river. With no second thought, the young man leapt in and pulled the distraught bird from the water. After that, something changed. That chicken followed him everywhere, clucking at his heels, sleeping by the door. Time passed. The young man met a woman. They fell for each other, and soon she moved into the house. She wasn’t so enthusiastic about the chickens, but she tolerated them for his sake. A year later, they brought home a baby. For the first two years of that baby’s life, the three chickens were on his side.

Then one day, a neighbor’s dog got onto the property. There was a fight. Feathers flew. Two chickens didn’t make it. Only the one remained, the one the man had pulled from the river.

When the baby learned to walk, he took to nature the way his father had. Always wandering. Always chasing bugs, leaves, and wind. One day, he wandered a little too far down toward the river. No one saw him go. The current was stronger than it looked. He fell in. Too small to scream. Too young to swim. But not alone. The chicken saw everything.

Without a thought, it flapped, ran, and launched itself into the water. It clucked wildly, circling the child, wings slapping at the water, doing anything to keep the boy above the surface. The sound reached the man on the porch. He knew that cluck. That panic. He ran. When he got to the river, the scene nearly stopped his heart. The chicken struggled to keep the baby afloat, still calling out, feathers soaked, never giving up.

The man dove in and pulled them both out. The woman, shaking, flagged down a patrol officer passing by. The officer jogged over, boots sinking into the mud, and took one look at the drenched trio. The man, the baby, and the exhausted, dirty chicken. “What happened here?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. The man, catching his breath, said, “This chicken just saved my son’s life.” The officer let out a soft laugh, shaking his head. “It’s hard to impress me with chicken.”