THE LAST TALE: A Chicken Tooth Fairy
Not a Poultry Experience
At 4 years old, most children have the luxury of losing their first baby tooth in some uneventful yet exciting way, like biting into an apple or discovering their tooth at the bottom of a bowl of Lucky Charms. This initial surprise is usually followed by shrieks of excitement and the thumping of feet running up the stairs to shove it under a pillow.
I was not so lucky. In fact, on that eventful afternoon in the summer of 1994, as my 5-year-old, chubby-cheeked self crouched picking dandelions among the chickens, my first baby tooth was not lost: It was stolen.
Who, might you ask would be such a heartless culprit as to strip a child of the magical experience of losing their first tooth? The culprit was no person. My “tooth fairy” was, in fact, a very insensitive Plymouth Rock rooster that apparently didn’t give … Read the rest