a rooster votes in the night

I closed the front door quietly behind me and stepped out into the starlight.  The night was calm, the dark silhouettes of the cedars & pine rose motionless from the chicken run.

I stood listening for a moment, then turned my attention to the constellations shimmering above the black conifers.

This photo, from culinate.com is captioned

“Four roosters detracted from our idyllic life”.

A rooster crowing in the distance brought my mind back to earth.

We always end up with a couple roosters when we buy new chicks.  Their aggressive behavior marks them weeks before they starting testing the air with their first hoarse calls.  We run an ad offering free roosters and they quickly disappear.

Though sunrise was still hours away, I decided to open the polls.  It was time to settle a nagging question.  Should we keep a rooster from our next batch of chicks, to protect the hens from cats, and possibly produce a few chicks?

The rooster crowing in the night cast a no vote.  The polls closed, the vote was unanimous.  The referendum failed.  I returned to the house, quietly closing the door behind me.

Coo, coo, ca choo.

outwitted, again

The new fence has been effective thus far in its short life, but trouble looms ahead.  For the most part, the hens stay on their side, and we stay on ours, life is in balance.  True, the chicken run now resembles a small nation struggling to keep illegal immigration at bay, but it’s reassuring to know that we can retreat to it if a herd of cattle ever comes stampeding through our yard.

We added brown leghorns (“leggerns”) to our flock by accident, but we came to like them as they grew into striking hens, with lacey plumage on their necks and big white ear lobes like Lyndon Johnson.  Hatcheries market the breed as a good choice for free-ranging flocks because they are alert for predators and athletic, but as a human who asks only to love my property & be loved in return, they are rather trying because they flee in panic whenever I approach.  So I am not inclined to flatter them with adjectives like clever or resourceful.

So I was surprised to find a leghorn working it’s way around the house soon after the fence crew had packed it up.  Not just once, but almost every day. Worse yet, she was scaling the fence by launching herself from the limbs of the run’s graceful vine maple, a tree I could prune only at risk of ugly divorce or painful death, or both.

Outwitted, again, and this time by a chicken of suspect intelligence. The hens yearn for freedom.  I lie awake in the dark & ask myself, what if the other hens follow her up the tree?  We might as well pull down the fence, but then where could we run from a stampede?

Coo, coo, ca choo.

declaration of co-dependence

Evidently, the Declaration of Independence enshrines some, but not all of life’s self-evident truths. For example, It is evident to me that humans, not hens, who will record the history of people and poultry, though you will find no reference to this in that venerable document.

The history of Millie, the bantam hen, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.  Never have I challenged her for light or transient causes, nor have I attempted to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over her, yet I have been subjected to a long train of repeated abuses and injuries (!),
impairing my pursuit of happiness :-( .

To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

She has for a long time, opposed with manly firmness the peaceful collection of eggs, a task formidable to tyrants only :-( .

She has combined with others to raise chicks foreign to my affection :-( .

She has, in times of peace, emitted a loud cry of alarm when I enter the coop :-( .

I have warned her from time to time.  I have reminded her of her circumstances.

I have appealed to my wife, who is deaf to the voice of justice :-( .

It is said that history is written by the victors, but speaking for myself, this is not a truth, evidently.

Coo, coo, ca choo   : -)

the domestics' tranquility

Most of the feed is eaten by the squirrels, but we still call it a bird feeder. It sits on a stout pole under an aging maple tree, which threatens to obliterate it by randomly showering down rotten branches.

It does attract birds in addition to squirrels, and in our early chicken-years, it was a favorite hangout of the hens.  Every morning they would pour out of the keep en masse, round the garden shed & waddle up the front steps to get to the black sunflower seed spilled beneath it by the squirrels & jays.

Now that they are cut off from the feeder, the hens appear to remember the generosity of their wild kin.  I scatter their measure of scratch each morning & head down to the cul-de-sac for the newspaper.  By the time I return, band-tailed pigeons and blue jays have doubled the population on the ground.

The hens are always chasing each other away from the feed, but no heed is paid to this new crowd that only shows up for breakfast.  As I approach, the jays back off in an untrustworthy manner, but the skittish pigeons head for the tree tops where I can hear their heavy wingbeats as they move from branch to branch.  The hens don’t look up, pigeons, what pigeons?

Coo, coo, ca choo.

the chick or the eggs?

Cosmolopsically speaking, I vote for the chicken, but for me personally, it was the eggs.

For several decades before encountering an actual chicken in the wild, I had to learn how to cope with eggs.  Swallowing them with a bite of toast got me through breakfast.  Afternoon eggs, deviled or hard boiled, weren’t so egg-like, or could be rendered edible by the extravagant application of salt.

Then, in the winter of 1978, having developed an interest in woodworking, I began making daily trips to my grandparents' house, first to refinish a delicate writing desk my grandfather had made as a young man, and then to build a cabinet for my parents.  I worked with my grandfather’s tools in his dark garage which was lined with shelves of narrow cedar boxes filled with salvaged fastenings.  A little door next to the vice opened so a long board could extend outside through the wall.


My grandparents enjoyed the return of their prodigal grandson, so long as I left each evening with the garage as orderly & clean as on the morning I first arrived.  One day, my grandmother offered to make me lunch, and when I sat down, placed before me a plate of scrambled eggs like I had never seen before, which no amount of salt or toast could have improved.


Several years later, when it was too late to ask, and remembering only that she had added some parmesan cheese, I set myself the task of recreating her eggs.  Failing repeatedly, I chanced upon an article on egg scrambling methods and, so found in my skillet one morning a passable resemblance to my culinary grail.

I make my grandmother’s eggs by adding a touch of milk to a couple eggs, which I whip energetically with a fork, to mix in air.  I cook them quickly in butter, stirring all the while so they will cook uniformly, removing them from the pan as the last runniness disappears.  If all goes well, a soft, yellow cloud of eggs graces the plate.

They may not be my grandmother’s eggs exactly, but they are as close to them, and to heaven, as I will ever be.


Coo, coo, ca choo.

the old man & the hen

The hen is not young, but she is many years younger than him.

Of all the hens in the flock, only she seeks him out, asking for attention.  He feels a special bond with her because of this, though he knows she shares her affections with anyone who enters the run.

Does she want to be stroked, or is she hoping he will let her peck at the cans of feed before he scatters their contents under the cedar?  He would prefer not to know.

Her loyalty is fleeting.  He knows that as soon as he turns his back, she’ll try to slip around him to get to the open gate. 

She is a pragmatist.  She never dreams of storms or flight.

He is sentimental.  He wants to protect her.  He watches for cats in the dusk.

Coo, coo, ca choo.

oval argument

Life has been uneventful in the chicken run, making it more difficult to generate a story every Monday morning.  None of the hens are running for president, and so, are not in sync with the daily, or even weekly, news cycle. Someday, a female will be elected to the highest office in the land, but she will probably be a species of mammal, not a bird, and definitely not a chicken.

Performance during the debates will be a major obstacle for any bird aspiring to higher office, but the achilles heel for chickens specifically is national defense.  Defense is a thorn in the side of many human politicians, but “chicken" is an especially loaded term in this regard, and unlikely to be overcome the political advantages of having been raised on a family farm.

Coo, coo, ca choo