Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? (37 page)

That night, from my hotel in Hanoi, I send pictures of the red jungle fowl to I. Lehr Brisbin, the South Carolina ecologist. “
Way
too calm,” he writes back. “Probably not pure stuff.” Then he asks me to pluck some feathers and quills, seal them in a Ziploc bag, and bring them back for DNA testing.

Brisbin, the man who saved Gardiner Bump's Indian red jungle fowl from destruction in the 1970s, is enlisting a new generation of researchers to ensure that the remaining Bump birds survive well into the future. At Virginia Tech, biologists recently incubated eggs laid by Leggette Johnson's flock of wild red jungle fowl, the pure descendants of the Bump birds, in order to maintain a flock that will be sustainable for years to come. Brisbin's patient campaign to save the red jungle fowl is finally bearing fruit.

Returning from our excursion to Johnson's Georgia farm, he lays out his dream of repopulating South Asia with what he believes are the last of the truly wild chickens. Restocking forests from India to Vietnam with the Bump birds could halt or even reverse the genetic extinction of the wild chicken. His goal is not to supply game for hunters, nor is he convinced that preserving the wild fowl will benefit future poultry breeders. His reason has nothing, really, to do with ecology, breeding stock, or the sanctity of wildlife. “Most people's experience with chicken is in a shrink-wrapped package at the grocery store,” Brisbin grouses as we jostle down the rough track of his driveway. “Most people don't even see it as a bird.”

By returning a pure red jungle fowl, in all of its skittishness and heightened senses, to the forests and jungle from whence it came, his goal is simple. The act would pay homage to an animal that has proven itself as our most steadfast and versatile companion. “It's the last cause I want to take on,” he says as we pull up at the front door and he reaches into the back for his cane and the bag with the dead squirrel that he collected on the highway. Brisbin wants to save the red jungle fowl not for science, industry, or even future generations. He wants to save the bird as a way to say thank you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The name on the cover does not reflect the many people unmentioned in the text who made this book possible, including Jenny Cook, David Amber, Tom Hunter Aryati, Wayan Ariati, Psyche Williams-Forson, Tristana Brizzi, Tomas Condon, Rudy Ballentine, Collin Brown, Mark Fleming, Ed Rihacek, Eduardo Montero, Paul Farago, Nathan Lilly, and all the staff at Tod's, the people of AMC, my agent Ethan Bassoff, editor Leslie Meredith, Jessica Chin, Stephanie Evans Biggins, and Mahan Kalpa Khalsa, who hatched the idea. For those who patiently shared their experiences and knowledge of all things chicken, I am deeply grateful.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Lawler landed his first job as a reporter just days before the 1986
Challenger
space shuttle disaster and spent the next decade and a half covering science and technology politics as a staff writer for several publications in Washington. After a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism fellow, he founded the New England bureau of
Science
and began reporting frequently on archaeology in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Far East. His articles and op-ed pieces have appeared in more than a dozen publications, including
National Geographic
,
Smithsonian, The New York Times
,
Audubon
,
Slate
,
and
The Washington Post
, as well as in
The
Best of American Science and Nature Writing
. Lawler is a contributing writer for
Science
and a contributing editor for
Archaeology
. He owns no chickens, preferring to visit those of his friends. For more, see
www.andrewlawler.com
.

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NOTES

Introduction

1
Pope Francis I
:
Revista
, “Bergoglio: El Cardenal Que No le Teme al Poder,” July 26, 2009, accessed March 25, 2014,
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1153060-bergoglio-el-cardenal-que-no-le-teme-al-poder
.

1
In Antarctica, chickens are taboo
: “Introduction of Non-­Native Species in the Antarctic Treaty Area: An Increasing Problem” (paper presented to the XXII ATCM, Tromso, Norway, May 1998), World Conservation Union.

2
“Both the jayhawk and the man”
: Julian Simon, ed.,
The Economics of Population: Classic Writings
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 110.

3
Jared Diamond, author of the bestseller
Guns, Germs, and Steel: Jared M. Diamond,
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 158.

3
“Chickens do not always enjoy an honorable position”
: E. B. White and Martha White,
In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 77.

3
Though Susan Orlean declared the chicken
:
Susan Orlean, “The It Bird,”
New Yorker
, September 28, 2009.

3
In 2012, as the cost of eggs shot up in Mexico City
:
William Booth, “The Great Egg Crisis Hits Mexico,”
Washington Post
, September 5, 2012.

3
“They are eating pigeon and chicken”
: David D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger, “A ­Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History,”
New York Times
, February 13, 2011.

3
When poultry prices tripled in Iran
:
Reuters, “Iran's Chicken Crisis Is Simmering Political Issue,” July 22, 2012.

4
“A commodity appears at first sight”
: Nicholas Mirzoeff,
The Visual Culture Reader
(London: Routledge, 2002), 122.

6
“Everything forgets”
: George Steiner,
George Steiner: A Reader
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 219.

1. Nature's Mr. Potato Head

7
On a chilly dawn in a damp upland forest
: William Beebe,
A Monograph of the Pheasants
(London: published under the Auspices of the New York Zoological Society by Witherby & Co., 1918–1922), 172.

9
“Those birds which have been pointed out”
: Edmund Saul Dixon,
Ornamental and Domestic Poultry: Their History and Management
(London: At the Office of the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1850), 80.

9
The wolf that became the dog
: Melinda A. Zeder, “Pathways to Animal Domestication,” in BoneCommons, Item #1838, 2012, accessed May 15, 2014,
http://alexandriaarchive.org/bonecommons/items/show/1838
.

10
“Members of this most beautiful”
: William Beebe,
A Monograph of the Pheasants
, vii.

10
While other American zoos kept birds in small pens
: Kelly Enright,
The Maximum of Wilderness: Naturalists & The Image of the Jungle in American Culture
, Rutgers ­University dissertation, 2009, 130.

11
“Boredom is immoral”
: Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr., “My Most Unforgettable Character,”
Reader's Digest
, July 1968, 93.

11
“Everywhere they are trapped, snared”
: William Beebe,
A Monograph of the Pheasants
, 2:34.

11
Beebe was particularly taken
: Ibid., Plate XL.

12
“It is seldom that I have seen”
: Ibid., 179.

13
Beebe concludes that the red jungle fowl
: Ibid., 191.

13
He was writing at the dawn of genetics
: Thomas Hunt Morgan, “Chromosomes and Associative Inheritance,”
Science
34, no. 880 (November 10, 1911): 638.

13
The fowl's unusual plasticity
: William Beebe,
A Monograph of the Pheasants
, 2:191.

13
In 2004, a huge international team of scientists
:
Genome Sequencing Center, Washington University School of Medicine, “Sequence and Comparative Analysis of the Chicken Genome Provide Unique Perspectives on Vertebrate Evolution,”
Nature
432, no. 7018 (December 9, 2004): 695.

14
Chickens skip the eclipse plumage phase
: William Beebe,
A Monograph of the Pheasants
, 2:209.

15
Early monarchs in the ancient Near East
: Jeff Sypeck,
Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800
(New York: Ecco, 2006), 161.

15
By the Great Depression
: Dian Olson Belanger and Adrian Kinnane,
Managing American Wildlife
(Rockville, MD: Montrose Press, 2002), 45.

15
In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt
: Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, 16 USC 669–669i, 50 Stat. 917 (1937).

15
“American wildlife management officials now are facing”
:
The Thirty-Eighth Convention of the International Association of Game, Fish and Conservation Commissioners: September 15, 16, and 17, 1948, Haddon Hall Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey
,
International Association of Game, Fish and Conservation Commissioners (Washington, DC: The Association, 1949), 138.

16
Bump and his wife, Janet, set out
: “Interior scientist and wife search for foreign game birds,” news release, U.S. Department of Interior, Department Information Service, April 29, 1949.

16
In 1959, the Bumps rented
: “Reports on the Foreign Game Introduction Program,” U.S. Department of Interior, 1960.

16
Undeterred, Bump went on
: G. Bumps, “Field report of foreign game introduction program activities, Reports 6–8,” Branch of Wildlife Research, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, Washington, D.C., 1960.

16
It was, he wrote,
: “Reports on the Foreign Game Introduction Program,” U.S. Department of Interior, 1960.

17
“Hold on, I have to get”
: I. Lehr Brisbin Jr., interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.

17
In 1959, Pan Am inaugurated
: “Pan Am Firsts,” Pan Am Historical Foundation, July 26, 2000, accessed March 25, 2014,
http://www.panamair.org/OLDSITE/History/firsts.htm
.

18
In early 1970, as the nation
: Brisbin, interview.

19
He published his findings
: I. Lehr Brisbin Jr., “Response of Broiler Chicks to Gamma-­Radiation Exposures: Changes in Early Growth Parameters,”
Radiation Research
39, no. 1 (July 1969): 36–44.

21
Even Beebe's New York Zoological Park
: Brisbin, interview.

21
Brisbin eventually returned
: B. E. Latimer and I. L. Brisbin Jr., “Growth Rates and Their Relationships to Mortalities of Five Breeds of Chickens Following Exposure to Acute Gamma Radiation Stress,”
Growth
51: 411–424.

21
“I thought, wow, here's a chance”
: I. Lehr Brisbin Jr., Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities, “Concerns for the Genetic Integrity and Conservation Status of the Red Junglefowl,”
SPPA Bulletin
2, no. 3 (1997): 1–2.

22
Plants also face challenges
: Dorian Fuller, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2013.

22
Searching through dusty drawers
: A. T. Peterson and I. L. Brisbin Jr., “Genetic Endangerment of Wild Red Junglefowl
Gallus gallus
?”
Bird Conservation International
9 (1999): 387–394.

23
In a joint 1999 paper
: Ibid.

23
“You go in there and”
: Leggette Johnson, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.

25
Darwin explained such extravagance
: Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
(London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1871), 38.

26
He was part of the team
: “Sequence and Comparative Analysis of the Chicken Genome Provide Unique Perspectives on Vertebrate Evolution,” 695.

26
In 2011, he visited
: Leif Andersson, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.

2. The Carnelian Beard

28
And lo, the Rooster King
: Jay Hopler, “The Rooster King,” forthcoming; quoted by permission of the author.

28
The chicken's grandest entrance
: Daniel T. Potts,
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
(Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 843; F. S. Bodenheimer,
Animal and Man in Bible Lands
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 166; Richard A. ­Gabriel,
Great Captains of Antiquity
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 22; ­Donald B. Redford,
The Wars in Syria and Palestine of Thutmose III
(Boston: Brill, 2003), 225; Nicolas Grimal,
A History of Ancient Egypt
(Paris: Librairie Arthéme Fayard, 1988), 216.

29
The four exotics
: J. B. Coltherd, “The Domestic Fowl in Ancient Egypt,”
Ibis
108, no. 2 (1966): 217. See also John Bagnell Bury et al. eds., “The Reign of Thutmose III,” chapter 4 in
The Cambridge Ancient History: The Egyptian and Hittite Empires to 1000 B.C.
,
vol. 2
(New York: Macmillan, 1924).

29
Only five foot three inches tall
: Homer, “A Visit of Emissaries,” book nine in
The Iliad
, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 209.

29
But the inscription
: “The reference you have for Thutmose III is tricky since the text of the king's annals at Karnak is damaged. It possibly refers to birds that give birth (ms) every day. The word
ms
is a reconstruction and should be taken with a grain of salt. In any case, regardless of what the text of Thutmose III says, chicken would have been rare exotic animals that may have been kept in personal and/or royal zoos at this time.” Rozenn Bailleul-LeSuer, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2013.

29
They were mesmerized
: Glenn E. Perry,
The History of Egypt
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 1.

30
Across the Nile, on the barren
: Prisse D'Avennes and Olaf E. Kaper,
Atlas of Egyptian Art
(Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000), 137.

30
Working in the Valley of the Kings
:
Howard Carter, “An Ostracon Depicting a Red ­Jungle-Fowl. The Earliest Known Drawing of the Domestic Cock,”
The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
9, no. 1/2
(
1923): 1–4.

30
Yet the sought-after Egyptologist
: Ibid.

31
It struts its stuff like any
: Ibid.

31
Based on its location, he
: Ibid.

31
The other candidate is a silver
: Christine Lilyquist, “Treasures from Tell Basta,”
Metropolitan Museum Journal
47 (2012): 39.

31
But if the chicken was special
: Bailleul-LeSuer, interview by Andrew Lawler [9AT2TK].

31
They also mummified hundreds
: Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, eds.,
Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
(London: Routledge, 1999), s.v., “Saqqara.”

32
While the Egyptians
: Andrew Lawler,
“
Unmasking the Indus: Boring No More, a Trade-Savvy Indus Emerges,”
Science
320, no. 5881 (June 2008): 1276–1281, doi: 10.1126/science.320.5881.1276.

33
Richard Meadow and his colleague Ajita Patel
: Richard Meadow and Ajita Patel, interviews by Andrew Lawler, 2013.

34
West of Delhi
: Vasant Schinde, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.

34
One enterprising archaeologist recently
:
Sharri R. Clark,
The Social Lives of Figurines: Recontextualizing the Third Millennium BC Terracotta Figurines from Harappa
(Pakistan)
, (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2012), ch. 4.

35
But recent analysis of Indus cookware
: Andrew Lawler, “Where Did Curry Come From?”
Slate
, January 29, 2013, accessed March 18, 2014,
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/01/indus_civilization_food_how_scientists_are_figuring_out_what_curry_was_like.html
.

35
the archaeologist Arunima Kashyap
: Ibid.

36
At an Indus site called Lothal
: Gregory L. Possehl,
The Indus Civilization
:
A Contemporary Perspective
(Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002), 80.

37
According to Genesis
: Genesis: 11:31 (
New American Bible
).

37
The city in 2000 BC drew traders
: Daniel T. Potts,
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
, 707.

37
Shulgi also is credited with
: Hans Baumann,
In the Land of Ur
:
The Discovery of Ancient Mesopotamia
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), 111.