Fans of Georgia author Flannery O’Connor probably know that she had a lifelong love of birds, especially peacocks. What you might not know is that her love of birds might have started with a chicken her family owned when she was very young. She loved the bird so much that she even taught it to walk backwards!
There have long been stories that Flannery and her famous “backwards chicken” once appeared in a newsreel. However, despite several exhaustive Internet searches, I was never able to find it… until now. Here is the clip, called “Do You Reverse?”, which shows a young “Mary O’Connor” for about two seconds. Note that the other animals walking backwards in the clip are simply shown in reverse.
Look at how cute she was! 🙂