Whistling Girls and Crowing Hens

    

     "If you are going to make that noise, go outside," Mom sighed wiping her hands on the dish towel as she finished the morning dishes. Her patience worn thin from the endless airy breaths of spittle and shrills I was making. 

      "It's not noise," I replied heading out the back door. "It's whistling." I was bound and determined to learn how to whistle that summer.

      "You know what Grandma always said, 'Whistling girls and crowing hens, always come to some bad end."

     "Yeah, right," I whispered under my breath, rolled my eyes and headed out the back door. Grandma had a lot of these odd sayings, old superstitions for a time gone by when acting like a lady was important. She never let my Mother lick her ice cream cone in public when she was a girl. I never understood how you could eat an ice cream cone without licking it? I wasn't worried about being ladylike in my blue jeans and braids. What kind of bad end could come from whistling? It was just a saying and held no real threat, right? By the end of the summer, I had learned to whistle and seemed none the worse for wear.

     I raised chickens in a small coop in our backyard. Out of my first batch of fluffy yellow chicks came a black-feathered pair. Henrietta and William ruled the coop for several generations of chickens. William became the compliment to my Mom's dumplings after his orneriness overtook his usefulness. I missed his morning song but I doubt the neighbors did. Henrietta continued her grandmotherly presence, a mainstay in our hen yard. Then one quiet afternoon, a distinct "cock-a-doodle-do" came from the backyard.

     "What was that?" Mom questioned me.

     "I don't know," I said the back door slamming on my way out.

    The crowing got louder as I neared the hen yard. I wondered how a rooster had found his way through three fences to get in the coop.  But when I turned the corner, only our hens were in the yard.  Dumbfounded, I stood still for a moment. And then I saw Henrietta scratch a couple of times in the dirt, lift her head to the sky and in a cloud of dust begin crowing. She strutted a bit when she finished quite proud of herself like a little old lady who decides she has reached an age when all propriety can be dropped.

     However, Henrietta wouldn't relish in her new found talent for long. And within a week, the echo of Grandma's saying reverberated in my mind. "Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad end." I found Henrietta's lifeless body in the hen yard one morning. Our crowing hen came to her bad end, but this whistling girl seems to be none the worse for wear after over 30 years of whistling. 

     Though, I have been known to look behind shoulder after a particularly exuberant whistle, you just never know.