Unit 8 translation appreciation 2.doc

Chicken Delight She came, she clucked, she conquered our New York City backyard. By William Grimes，选自Newyork Times（纽约时报） One day in the dead of winter（在隆冬，另有in the death of winter, in the deep of winter. 另有in the dead of night, in the deep of night, in the depth of night, in the depths of night在深更半夜，在夜深人静时）, I looked out my back window and saw a chicken. It was jet-black with a crimson wattle, and it seemed unaware that it was in New York City. In classic barnyard fashion, it was scratching, pecking and clucking. I shrugged off the apparition（意外的，不寻常的）出现，露面. Birds come and go. Usually they’re pigeons, not chickens, but like other birds, this one had wings and it would probably use them. Or so I thought. The protagonist of this story is known simply as the chicken. How it came to a small backyard in Astoria, Queens昆斯区的阿斯托利亚, remains a matter of conjecture. The chicken made its first appearance next door, at the home of a multitude of 一群cabdrivers from Bangladesh. My wife, Nancy, and I figured，they had bought the chicken and were fattening it for a feast. That hypothesis fells into doubt when the chicken hopped the fence and began pacing the perimeter of our yard with a proprietary air. Eating it was out of the question. As a restaurant critic and an animal lover, I subscribe to a policy of complete hypocrisy. Serve fish or fowl to me, but don’t ask me to watch the killing. Once I meet it, I don’t want to eat it. Nancy and I next theorized that the chicken had escaped from a live-poultry market about four blocks away and was on the run. Our hearts went out to the brave little refugee. We had to save it. Of course we knew nothing about raising chickens. For starters, we didn’t know whether our chicken was male or female. Moreover, what do chickens eat? A colleague put me in touch with a farmer, Steve Townley of Milford, N.J. He poured balm over my many and various anxieties. “Chickens will eat just about anything,” he said. Cold would not kill them