Chicken Little

We have a wonderful understanding with close friends of ours here in town.  They, like us, have a beautiful golden retriever as a family pet.  She is one year younger than our dog Sammy and they really are the best of friends; as deep as dog friendship can go.  The understanding is that when either family needs to leave town without the dog, the other family will care for both dogs.  Strangely, I quite enjoy having two dogs here as Sammy is kept very entertained by his younger girl-pal and Ben especially loves dual-dog ownership.  Well, our friends recently acquired some new 'family pets':  four laying hens.  Thus, we agreed to feed and water the chickens over the weekend.  In exchange, any eggs were ours for the keeping.

Feeding the chickens essentially means dumping a full bucket of compost over the top of the coop where the chickens wait in eager anticipation of food in varying degrees of decomposition.  This evening routine became the highlight of our day over the past weekend.  We would pile the kids and the compost into the van and make the short trek to our friends' house.  Sunday evening we arrived at the property a little after six and Dave grabbed the compost bucket out of the back of the van.  The kids circled the coop and the chickens pocked in excitement.  Now, chickens are very stupid.  Even stupider than the golden retrievers.  And far more fragile.

Unlike me, Dave is not always aware of the contents of the compost bucket.  And, might I remind you, the chickens are very stupid.  So stupid that they wait like Israelites in the desert as food rains down from heaven - all over their backs.  In fact, the chicken who had been sprayed with pistachios shells and trout from the evening before still had remnants of dinner on his back the next day.  Thus, my eyes grew large as I watched the rotting food pour down from the hands of its maker.  Something very large was at the bottom of the compost:  a large and undevoured cabbage.  Oh yes, I remembered, the cabbage that had rotted in the fridge only last week.  I felt vaguely uneasy and a little like a character in the The Flopsy Bunnies.

Meanwhile, the chickens, completely unaware of the missile hurtling from above, waited with chicken smiles pasted across their tiny faces.  "Pock!  Pock!" they cried as the equivalent of a WWI shell bore down on their foxhole.  In the amount of time that it takes for a cabbage to fall eight feet I managed to type the following email in my head:

Dear friends, The dog is fine.  The chickens, however, are victims of their own stupidity.  Chicken no. 3 was found last night in a state of distress having found her tiny skull buried underneath the weight of a large and rotting cabbage.  All efforts were made to revive her.  Dave, although skilled in the finer points of bovine husbandry, falls short of the mark in regard to fowl, or rather, poultry.  It was far too late for reconstructive surgery.  Chin up, there might be one less egg but a fine chicken dinner awaits.  Plus, the bones will make an excellent stock.  Perhaps greater attention should have been paid to the warnings of that great nursery story character:  the sky, after all, really was falling.  Should I make the cheque payable to you or your husband?  Elena

Fortunately, chickens have guardian angels.  Little chicken guardian angels who pock out warnings and shove their wards out of the way of falling objects.  In a stroke of tremendous luck, the cabbage fell only inches to the side of one of the chickens who was already revelling in the latest entree.

One friendship salvaged, one lesson learnt.  The marshmallow roast and the high-risk-for-fire warning can wait for another post.  That, and Mommy playing tag.  And for your viewing pleasure:  an ingenius song about town gossips and their striking resemblance to laying hens.