Colonel Huggins has retired from the U.S. Army and now lives on a piece of land that he shares with illegal squatters. He has not complained about them yet because he is a 'nice' man, and also because he does not quite know what to do about them. But he has noticed the animals that they live with—especially the pullet that escapes to his house and eventually earns his trust. Huggins goes out of his way to be kind to the animals that he sees, buying food with his own money to feed the neighbor's fowl and livestock. He alters the route of his daily walk to interact with them. He does not eat ribs any more because he saw a herd of cows walking past and thought that they looked remarkably like a distinguished cocktail party of humans. Huggins notices a curious personhood in animals that he sometimes cannot see in people, and is suddenly taken with the mood to paint the cows that he sees. The cries of fowl convey emotion to him. He sympathizes with the aged mare in a nearby stable, and wonders if he himself would be able to subsist on a diet of nothing but dried hay. The pullet that flew to Huggins squawks in the distance, and he squawks back to it.