Episode Seven: A Chicken is the Most Pitiful of All Birds

I can’t really say where the inspiration for Uncle Faucett’s love of birds came from. Except, maybe, it had to do with the eagle head my dad carved for me with his chainsaw. I remember telling Daddy that I thought it looked like a chicken.

Don’t judge. I found the chicken/eagle in the basement. It’s made of cedar. It was my dad’s first and ONLY piece of chainsaw art, as far as I know. He soon decided that maybe chainsaw art wasn’t his calling. Then he made me a cedar table. Cedar was Daddy’s favorite wood. It had been handed down to him by his mom that cedar was a sacred wood. We always had cedar in our house. Sometimes, it was only a box of cedar shavings from his whittling and carvings. In the winter, he’d sit beside the wood stove, a box at his feet. He’d carve things for us kids, necklaces, tiny toys, etc. He was much better with a knife that he was with a chainsaw. Maybe it was his carving that inspired me to make Uncle Faucett a carver.