One of the best things about my family besides their generosity, openness, kindness, and numerous other positive adjectives, is that they have two pets. All of you who know me in America know I am a huge animal lover. It actually borders on obsession. I love my pets and love having them around. So when I realized my family had a dog and cat I was naturally happy. Our kitten, Zobrik, welcomed me on the first night by climbing into my bed and has continued to provide me with entertainment.
Graff on the other hand, is a little strange. While Zobrik is under a year old, Graff (this means Duke in Russian) is 10 years old and enormous. My family seemed to be extremely worried that I would freak out when I saw him, which is a pretty legitimate concern. He looks extremely menacing. He is huge, and muscular, and barks a lot. But despite his looks, Graff is actually a sweet heart. He likes to put his head in my lap when I sit down and stare at me hoping I will pet him. He enjoys rolling around in the yard and I assume scratching his back on the grass. Most of the time he is either sleeping, eating, or bugging some one in the family for attention.
But Graff’s hobby lately has been killing our neighbor’s chickens. The first time this happened I was out the door on my way to school. I had come home from lunch and was walking the 20 feet from my front door to the fence. Suddenly I looked over into the area next to our house and was completely confused to see a small chicken. Our neighbors on both sides have chickens, but I have never seen them in our yard. My natural instinct was to pick up the chicken and toss him out (I am not afraid of chickens due to my own history with our three stupid pet chickens in Michigan). But before I could even get near the chicken, Graff noticed the little intruder and began to chase him in a circle around the tree in our front yard. This scene resembled a cartoon as the chicken ran around clucking wildly and attempting to fly, as Graff chased him menacingly. Finally Graff cornered the thing and within a minute had broke its neck and killed the poor chicken.
I was horrified. I must have screamed and yelled and then finally realized I should go get my sister in the house. I ran in screaming and tried to tell her in my pathetic Russian that Graff had killed a chicken but she didn’t really get it. Once I got her outside she analyzed the scene and immediately started laughing. Apparently this isn’t a new thing. Graff had killed another chicken the previous week and didn’t actually even eat the chickens, just liked killing them.
When I told my language teacher about this, she replied, "to my mind he his not hungry, he is just a killer." For the last few weeks of my time in Almalybak I began to notice that about every couple of days there was a new chicken corpse in our yard. The funny thing is my family didn’t really mess with these. They kind of sat and decomposed. I don’t know if they didn’t notice them, or if they just didn’t feel like moving them anymore. By the time the 7th or 8th chicken died, I was starting to wonder if our neighbors noticed. My family said they didn’t tell them, but I don’t really know. It’s kind of hard to miss that many missing chickens.
Anyway, I think that I will probably miss Graff and his chicken killing. Despite my initial horror, this experience has actually made me laugh really hard.
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