Life is speaking

Some time ago, I read the following addressed to writers who may occasionally suffer the dreaded writer’s block:

Life is speaking; what is it saying?

And we were instructed to write about that.

Life has been yelling for a few days, and I am here to unburden myself of all it has to say. Apologies in advance.

Houdini with feathers

If you ever have opportunity to be around homesteaderly-types, you will surely hear someone at some point say, “Chickens are so easy.”

This is a bald-faced lie.

Ben and I have owned cows since 2017, and I’m sure I have never worked this hard taking care of them, despite the obvious difference in size. After all, you just put them in the field and they eat grass, right honey? In case you didn’t know, I am married to the king of “how hard can it be?”

And since Ben is a farmer at heart, we could not stop with one animal species. We needed to diversify, and the next logical step was chickens. I was not opposed to this idea because I like eggs and also because of the multiple times I have heard the “chickens are so easy” lie. The first rule of propaganda is: If you say it long enough and loud enough, eventually everyone will believe it. I am a victim.

So when an older couple at church asked if we would please take their coop and eight already-laying Jersey Giant hens, we were thrilled. Ben took the trailer to pick up the whole operation, and just like that we were chicken owners. Isn’t this fun?

There is a whole history behind these birds being confined to their coop, being terrified to come out when we made them a run, having to drag them literally kicking and squawking out, one dying an untimely death (not because of us dragging them), two being mercilessly pecked at by the others, and more chicken drama than I can even remember from the last six weeks. I get my 10,000 steps in by walking to the coop and back a frillion times a day, trying to keep up with what’s wrong now.

Almost immediately upon moving to the farm, one of the hens went broody. I only knew this because my chicken-expert daughter-in-love Amy told me that’s what was going on. She advised me to keep pulling the hen off the nest and taking the eggs as soon as they were laid. It took three days and Little Miss Broody was back to normal. I felt quite accomplished.

But as the Bible says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

A second hen went broody shortly thereafter and she and I have been in a battle of wills ever since. I pulled her off the nest many times a day like I did with the first one, and she went right back to it every time. I took all the eggs. I held her in a basin of cold water until she freaked out and we both were soaked, five times in four days. I put ice blocks in the nest boxes and she happily settled on them like she was going to hatch mini ice cubes. I filled the boxes with pine cones and sticks so they’d be uncomfortable. One night I put a gallon jug of water in her favorite box and she wedged herself in alongside it like she was sharing a too-small bed with a too-big partner. Girlfriend has some chutzpah.

She has come close to breaking me. Several times a day I go out and grab her by the tail feathers, pull her off, and make her leave the nest to eat and drink. My last hope is that Amy is chicken-sitting next week and if there is one thing Amy does not do, it’s lose. In the next seven days, Sister Broody is going to meet her match. I only wish I could be there to see it.

Last week while I was in Tennessee visiting my three daughters and seven of the grands, Ben told me one day that he went outside and found a few of the hens wandering around the yard. Their run does not have a top on it, but only because we read early on that Jersey Giants don’t fly, unless you count the part where they jump out of the three-foot-high coop to the ground and then fly back up to it in the evening. They have a ramp, but when it’s time for bed, they prefer to flap their way up. Maybe going up the ramp feels like walking the plank.

Anyway, Ben thought he probably didn’t push the step-in stake close enough to the edge and that’s where they got out. So there they were, wandering around the yard acting like they wanted to get back in their run but not knowing how, so Ben shooed them all in the right direction and it wasn’t really that difficult to round them up. Chickens are dumb, but they do come home to roost.

Since then, one or two have consistently gotten out every day. One day I found a sweet little nesting spot they’d made next to a tree, shaded by bushes, where one had laid an egg. The next day, same thing. So I assumed someone just found a new place and wanted to lay her daily offering there. No big deal.

But the last few days, despite a couple of hens getting out, there have been no eggs in this homemade nest. And at the same time, egg production has dropped from six a day to two.

Are they molting? Is it too hot? Is it that I bought pellets instead of crumbles by mistake last time and they just don’t like the new rations? Do they need more protein? More watermelon? And why are they pecking each other? Is it just a pecking-order issue? I’ve been told by “experts” to remove the bullies—the ones doing the pecking. But how do you know who that is? Do I have to set up a wildlife cam to catch them in the act? They all look the same except for the one with big bare patches on her back and the one with a bald head and neck that looks like a refugee. How are they getting out? Could they really be squeezing through the fence? (Yes, they could and they are.) Why is this so hard?

We know their environment is not ideal. The coop is too small, but it’s what came with them. We have ordered a brand-new, Amish-built, chicken palace for more than the appropriate price, but the wait time is three to four weeks. Will they survive until then? Will I?

Chicken momming is killing me.

I see the mailbox

Years ago, before the advent of anything electronic other than a television, my parents gifted us a subscription to Reader’s Digest every year. Remember that? When our kids got old enough to read, we had to institute the rule that Mom and Dad got to read it first, or we wouldn’t see the latest edition until two months after it came to the house.

One month, we read a story called “I See the Mailbox,” about a married couple and a minor communication snafu.

They were backing out of the driveway one day, husband driving, wife riding shotgun, when the following conversation occurred:

Wife: Honey, watch out for the mailbox.

Husband: I got it.

Wife: (pitch a little higher) Honey, watch the mailbox!

Husband: I SEE the mailbox!

Wife: (ever closer to the mailbox) You’re going to hit the mailbox!

Husband: Stop! I’m not going to . . .

(Sound of metal scraping metal, mailbox falling over)

The point of the story was that we usually see things from our own perspective, even when that perspective may not be 100% accurate. (Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.)

My point is that I never think about a mailbox without remembering that story. It happened this very morning.

I went out at the crack of dawn about 7:30 to walk Hank down the road and let him get all his sniffs done before it was a thousand degrees. No, I do not exaggerate. When we got to the end of the driveway, I noticed skid marks in the gravel. I looked to the right and I could see where the car coming around the curve sometime last night had not quite kept it on the pavement, and where it had narrowly missed my neighbor’s mailbox. Then I looked left and saw the splintered bottom half of the 4x4 that used to hold my mailbox sticking out of the ground at an angle, chunks of concrete all around, and no mailbox in sight.

When things like this happen, it often takes our brain a few moments to process what we can’t imagine has actually happened. Hank and I walked toward the wood-and-concrete carnage and finally found the missing pieces thrown off into the woods. I also found a few car parts and I am just Sherlock Holmes enough to deduce that it was a small black Nissan that did the dastardly deed. I am sure of this because on the inside of one of the parts, which are all black, it says “NISSAN.” I picked them all up and brought them in . . . I don’t know why. Am I going to hunt all the black Nissans within a 50-mile radius? Don’t think I haven’t considered it. I found myself looking at the front bumper of every oncoming black car today while I was going to get the oil changed.

Also, eight years ago I was violently rear-ended in Asheville (I am an idiot magnet) by an orange Honda Element. The driver fled the scene. It was enough to give me a concussion that kept me from working for a few weeks, so I sat on the front porch and called literally every body shop in Asheville telling them if a car of that make and model came in with front-end damage, I wanted to know about it, and I left my name and number. I also once followed an orange Element from West Asheville all the way out to Swannanoa just so I could look at the front of it. Don’t underestimate me when I’m mad.

So here is what used to be my mailbox, plus a couple of small black Nissan bumper pieces. I found a third piece this afternoon. With any luck I’ll find a license plate too.

And there’s this

Yesterday after church Ben and I decided we were craving some truly mediocre Mexican food, so we went to what is arguably the lesser of two local evils, the Taco Wagon, for lunch. We got there just in the nick of time. Our friends who arrived after us told us later they’d waited over an hour to get served. I’m not sure I would wait that long. But I digress.

We did have to wait ten minutes for a booth, which I am okay with because I don’t like sitting in the middle of a dining room with people walking all around me. So I sat in the waiting area while Ben got us on the list. Then he came over and handed me the pager and said he was going to the restroom. I looked down in my lap and saw this:

What.

Also, this sign was recently seen upon exiting a local Wal-Mart, that bastion of outstanding grammar:

Thank you for letting me get all that off my chest.