When my son was two years old, he used to play with Power Rangers figures. I hope he never reads this, because now that he’s a teenager, he’d probably wire a bomb to my car for saying it. Or strangle me with his iPod earbuds.

His favorite was a green one. Trevin’s Green Ranger was missing a leg, so my son named him “Lucky.” He explained, in perfect two-year-old oral arguments, that the Power Ranger had to be “Lucky” because he wasn’t missing the other leg, too. Trevin took Lucky everywhere with him, even several times to Hawaii, when we’d go there to visit my wife’s side of the family.

We live on a farm. I brought home some baby chickens a few years ago, but they were too small to put out in the henhouse, so we kept them in the bathroom. One day, our Aussie dog came into the house to herd and play with our little chickens. The dog played with one of them a little too enthusiastically, and ended up removing all the bird’s feathers. But the chicken didn’t die (yet), so, of course, we named her “Lucky.”

When the chickens got big enough to move out to the henhouse, they thrived there (except for the ones who got eaten by a mountain lion). They lay so many eggs that we have to give them away. And they pretty much have their run of the place, going anywhere they want to (they’re fast enough to keep clear of the dogs).

One day, one of our horses stepped on Lucky’s leg and broke it. So I guess there was some kind of weird prophesy in naming her Lucky. Anyway, she still didn’t die (yet). But her leg was permanently bent backwards, and she didn’t so much walk as hop. But she still got around okay.

When we go out to the henhouse in the mornings, all the chickens follow us inside for food. Sometimes, when we stir around the straw and nests, we’ll uncover mice. The chickens love to chase the mice. They’ll even fight over them and eat them.

I have no doubt that if chickens were big enough, they’d eat people.

And chickens can live a long time, but not Lucky. When she died (finally), I found her outside the henhouse. She had choked to death on a really big mouse. The mouse was dead, too, hanging half-way out of Lucky’s unlucky beak, a weird kind of barnyard murder-suicide.

We still have lots of chickens, but none of them have names (yet).