Topic 23: Curiosity of Chickens

Carol:

CHICKEN SCRATCHINGS:

With Apologies to My Vegan Friends

“Chicken Little likes to walk in the woods. She likes to look at the trees. She likes to smell the flowers. She likes to listen to the birds singing.” (from Chicken Little)

One of the most memorable scenes in Giant is the Thanksgiving dinner scene.  When Elizabeth Taylor’s children find out the delectable looking stuffed turkey on the dining room table had been their “friend” Pedro the day before, they burst into tears and the meal is ruined.  Being a city girl myself, I haven’t had a lot of “up close and personal” moments with farm animals other than Sammy, the goat we owned for 5 years because he came with the house. But, I have talked to people who were raised on farms and generally they are unsentimental about animals and most likely don’t go naming them except for the occasional 4-H project.  We don’t eat our friends.

Most of the chicken stories I know are rated V for violence, not F for friend. On our morning walk today, I asked my friends (both transplanted Midwesterners) whether or not as children they had been around chickens. Mary replied that she had not, but her mother would buy  live chickens, then slaughter  and pluck them for dinner. Marilyn, who was raised on a farm, admitted that she and her sister had killed a chicken for dinner while their parents were not home.“It wasn’t pretty,” she said.  I too remember the chickens that pecked around in my grandmother’s yard during our childhood visits to their farm near Clovis, California.  Grandma was  a sweet, gentle lady, but she had no problem grabbing a chicken, wringing its neck, plucking its feathers, and serving it an hour later with dumplings and rice. Did those chickens have names? Personalities? Curiosity?

   

The chicken experts in my family live an hour away in Cornville (chickens and corn—they just go together, don’t they?). My niece and her family live in a rural community just half an hour and a culture apart from Sedona the chic. I would have asked them whether or not chickens should be named, chickens have personalities, or chickens are curious, but Allison is busy with her nursing classes, Craig is off managing the vineyard at Page Springs Winery, and the REAL expert… well, he’s at kindergarten.

Troen is the keeper of the chickens, the catcher of the chickens, and the harvester of eggs. He got this job by way of his size and speed. When he was younger, he was the only one who could get into the coop and catch a chicken, or squeeze in and grab a fresh, warm egg. He didn’t have to name the chickens. He will probably tell you they already came with names, like Leghorns or Rhode Island Reds or Plymouth Rocks. He will also tell you that eggs aren’t always white but come in beautiful shades of blues and greens as well. After all, he’s the expert. 

Higgledy, piggledy, my black hen,

She lays eggs for gentlemen;

Sometimes nine, sometimes ten

Higgledy, piggledy, my black hen.

Megan:

Three Reasons I Don't Like Chickens

A couple of months ago, my cousin Allison asked me to chicken-sit while she and her family went on vacation. My responsibilities were to open their pen in the morning and shut the pen at night, make sure they had enough food and collect the eggs.  Pretty easy, right? Actually no.

I’d always had this idea of free-range organic chickens skipping happily through the grass, clucking occasionally, gathering around while a farmer’s wife in a white apron scattered feed in the wind.  Like all idealized fantasies, I got that from the movies. Turns out chickens are disgusting, revolting pests only one step higher than pigeons.  Over the course of four days, I had at least 3 run-ins with these beasts that made me want to strike them from the planet forever.

First, after going to the grocery store to stock up on supplies, I left the car door open as I was unloading. When I came back outside there were no less than 5 chickens flapping and clucking around inside the car. This might have been charming, but they were pooping too.

Second, it’s hotter where my cousin lives. It’s only about an hour away from Prescott, but it’s at a lower altitude, which makes it closer to the fires of hell (science!). I’d only just returned to the country and had not adjusted yet. I was lying on the floor of their living room in my underwear, with a cold wet beach towel draped over me when I saw the shadow of a monster pass by the door. It was shaped like a rooster, but it was more than 6 feet tall. I’m not going to get into all of the details of what happened next, but there was screaming. I felt pretty stupid when I realized it was only a regular sized rooster, lit from behind by the setting sun, which cast a shadow bigger than a man.

The third event took place another evening after I’d shut them in their pen for the night. I suddenly heard the most god-awful racket coming from the pen. A chicken was screaming like it was being murdered.  It took me a minute to get myself in the proper frame of mind to go outside in the near darkness to confront a predator. As I opened the door, the racket ceased and a chicken suddenly went running past me into the bushes behind the house. And then the screams started again from the coop, so I went over to check. A chicken was in the tree that grew in the coop. It was scooting along the branch that overhung the fence, screeching and clucking like it was terrified. Once it passed over the top of the fence, it gave a final terrible chicken scream and fell out of the tree onto the ground outside the coop. Then it picked itself up and ran off into the bushes after its friend. Dumbest escape I’ve ever seen. I didn’t even try to herd them back, I just went inside and closed the door.