The Chicken Who Saved Us: The Remarkable Story of Andrew and Frightful

Young Andrew was autistic and bilingual. He spoke English…and Chicken. His family called him “The Chicken Whisperer.” He would shout, “Chi-kenn! Bak-ackk!” out his bedroom window on the second floor and the hen house would go wild. Five feathered dinosaur beasts with impossibly skinny legs went nutso until he ran across the yard to let them out of the coop. Then they would follow him around like he was a god.

Other days he would sit on the front porch deep in conversation with his best friend, an Araucana chicken named “Frightful.” It was a two-way dialog consisting of secrets told and secrets kept between boy and foul. His feathery friend became his voice, his only way to communicate in a confusing world. But one day, confided to Frightful; “I think my body is trying to kill me.”

That single statement catapulted Andrew’s family and medical community into action: To discover and destroy the unseen monster that was claiming his life–a disease that created pain so great that no painkiller could touch it.

By the time Andrew was sixteen, he had spent seven years living in and out of the hospital. He continued communing with Frightful, weaving superheroes into the stories of his own life. Frightful listened as she sat in his lap, or zoomed down the street on his new electric bike, stuffed into his jacket, zippered up to her beak.

When Andrew was no longer able to stay home, he conversed with Frightful from his hospital bed with the aide of two iPads and a FaceTime connection. And with that, came humor, laughter, and a resilience that astounded an entire medical community. Armed with the courage of a superhero, Andrew developed a will to live, and a desire to fight for a life he had never known: a life without pain.

Andrew received an experimental bone marrow transplant at Seattle Children’s Hospital in February of 2012, when he was eighteen. His sister was his donor. He was not expected to live through the night, but Andrew had other plans. The moment the infusion of the marrow began, he shouted into a room full of doctors, nurses, family and friends, “Bring It On!”

“I have some living to do,” he told his mother one afternoon, and within months, Andrew began transforming from a fearful, pain riddled boy into a young man on a mission.

Andrew’s story soon caught the attention of the Seattle Children’s hospital staff, the University of Washington Autism Clinic, Rotary groups, local bible studies, churches, and the school district where he eventually earned his high school diploma. At his graduation, he stood in front of an auditorium of parents, administrators and peers, and delivered a speech titled, “Why I think Chickens Have Autism.” He received a standing ovation.