Tails and Tidings: The Ovoid of Life

 It is the end of winter. The migrating birds are migrating, the crocuseses are crocusing,  and the air is filled with the sound of squawking hens, and the neighbor, pounding on the back door, shouting, "Your dog got out and she's killing your chickens!"?

 Yep. I'm sad to write, last week started with our big, muddy, puppy giddily galloping around the yard, snapping our hens' necks with a playful snatch n' shake technique we dog owners recognize from any game of tug-o-war. The whole event was shocking, and left us mourning the ladies we loved so. There were five casualties, when all was said and done.

Silver Lining: In times of strife, you learn a lot about the people around you. We would have lost our whole flock that morning, if our neighbor hadn't come to alert us. Also, Zelda's victims were cleaned, plucked, and given to a family who really appreciated the free organic food, thanks to my friend and farm wife mentor, Tawnya. The most helpful thing any of us can have on a journey of learning is someone who knows what they are doing and is inclined to help. We are humbly grateful for the smart, kind people in our lives. They kept a bad situation from getting worse, and even made the best of it.  

Back to Bloody Monday: At first, I was thinking like a pet owner. My girls! No more would I giggle at the sight of Rosalyn's cheekpuffs, or marvel at Pilar's beautiful silver-laced feathers. Anya, known as Onion, was our successful attempt to bring a Buff Orpington into the mix, without having  her end up a rooster. Pippi, who came to us in a post-rooster backwoods-style chicken trade, and fancied herself in charge (although we all know Hot Sauce is running the joint.) And the lovely Vilma, Blue Wyandotte who classed up the yard with her distinguished demeanor. I was heartbroken that I didn't do a better job of keeping them safe.

Then I started thinking like a farmer. A hungry farmer, who hasn't paid more than $20 for eggs in the last year. Five birds left, but six egg-eating mouths. We'd like to get an egg per person, per day, so we'd need at least six chickens. You do the math. Unless the guinea pigs suddenly start laying, we're in need of more fowl.

So we got two new chicks, because you just never know.*

*Step one in the process of starting over: When planning for the future, factor in a little failure.**

**Since beginning to compose this blog post, right after getting the chicks, we also lost Hot Sauce, our Rhode Island Red. The despondency-turned-resiliency cycle that kicked in around here went by so quickly, I nearly scrapped this whole post to make a big lofty one about never giving up. Instead, I'll just say that here, quickly. Never give up. Not until you're dead. If you give up while you're living, your days after that will be miserable disfunction, even if they aren't chockfull of frustrating failure. A dream, burning within you, is your best fuel. It may never be realized, but you are better off  powered by that than hapless resignation for the rest of your days.R.I.P, Hot Sauce, you elegant backyard boss. 

 Yo, you just got a blog post in your blog post, dawg.

 Returning to the issue at hand, and the regular-sized font: This was supposed to be the first year in a few when we would skip the fun of bringing chicks home from the farm store, Sure, they are cuteness walking, and I love that spring around the corner means the cheeping of fluffy little baby birds, but we were at capacity, until last Monday, that is. So, after feeling sad for a bit, I redirected my energy, dusted off the heat lamp and the tiny feeder I made years ago, and set up a brooder (a good place for chicks to stay warm during their first few weeks.)

Chicks need warmth, but they also need their area to have a cool spot. This is because they need to be able to find the right spot that's just the right temperature. During the day, the temperature around them fluctuates, and they will keep the all-important correct body heat level if given freedom to move from one temperature to the another. This is why they have a heat lamp focused on only one half of their cage.

The cage is the other thing. Usually, a high-walled container is ideal for a brooder, especially if it's going to have more than two chicks in it. I opted to put a high-walled area in the cage for them: an old basket with a door cut out of the side. They like to perch on it, and nap.

On the other side of the cage, we have the food, and grit, and water. The cool side of the cage is the best place for these things because the water can get murky under the warm light. I suspect all sorts of microscopic life forms might flourish in both their food and their water if it's warmer than necessary.

The sudden loss of most of our flock still makes me sad, but it's hard to stay that way when watching Parkour and Sasha, (Gold and Black Stars). Chicks are entertaining and engrossing. They're kind of reptilian, despite their eye-searing fluffy cuteness. Just like miniature chickens, they cock their heads, perch, scratch, preen their wing feathers and do battle: hilarious, wee warfare in which there is cranky peeping and tiny wing flapping. We call them our little dinosaurs.

They make me think of death and life. You usually see those terms reversed. Life, then death, right? But what if death is put first? Get out your mental pitchforks and help me turn this compost pile of ideas. Flip the cycle upside down and think of it that way, death almost seems like birth, because it gives way to what is next. As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans." I agree with John, even when what happens while you're planning, is death. So, while I feel sadness at the unexpected end of something, it is me mourning a lost plan, and plans are just plans. They aren't life.

Life is waking up and stretching your wings. It's tunneling your way out of a boring place, to run free. It's sensing danger and acting instinctively to save yourself, even if you can't. It's sensing food and acting instinctively, to hunt. It's running and hiding in fear. It's running and hurting with glee. It's helping and comforting those around you shocked by a day's events. It's thinking of tomorrow, with your stomach. It's starting over and over again, and getting better at it each go-around. It's a flow of behaviors that continue as the organisms who carry them out cyclically appear and recede. People will always make plans, dogs will always chase things,  and chicks will always be cute, and welcome.

Tails and Tidings: Regrets, I Can't Really Think of Any

It was with a heavy heart that we said good-bye to Cora and Candy yesterday. A few weeks ago, Cora crowed, loudly, and in the most roostery fashion. Then Candy. And then they both just kept crowing and growing the kind of feathers and features that only roosters have. A quick email to the Urban Farm Store, with a couple of attached pictures, confirmed that they are males. As backyard chickeneers, we had no choice but to send them packing. We can't have cock-a-doodle-doos, and we can't have fertilized eggs, so it was time to say farewell.

Do I sound sad? I am, sort of. I mean, we all wish they were hens. There's that. We would have loved for our false impressions of these birds to be..not false. Is it ever easy to say good-bye to someone you love? Probably not.

Still, we're trying to be pretend farmer types here, and it wouldn't do to get too mopey over the transient nature of a life lived among many other living things. In the immortal words of MC Lyte, "No one on earth is promised tomorrow. Believe that!"

The reality always was that we had two little roosters in the making. We bought them, brought them home, named them, fed them, loved them, and learned from them. We were ignorant of a reality, and that's all that has changed in the last few days. Knowing their gender didn't make me love Cora and Candy less, but it made me realize that what I thought might be many years with them was actually going to be just a few months. So, I thought something was true, and it turns out it wasn't. Something else was true.

I hope Candy and, now, Corey had what a cockerel* thinks of as a good time during their stint at Backyard University. Having to send them on their way at this point isn't what we planned, but "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." John Lennon said that. And how can one regret life? I really have to rack my brain and my heart and my soul to find something resembling regret for anything in my life, and I have trouble finding it.

*What you call a chick that won't ever give you any eggs, but instead will make lots of noise and grow up to pick fights with your children.

Don't get me wrong. There are so many things that I Would Do Differently If I Knew Then What I Know Now. Does that count as regret? To me, it doesn't because I think regret sounds like a certainty. If I go around now, not knowing what I'm doing, what makes me think I can be so sure I know what I should have done instead? Now I know that we bought two roosters. If I had known their gender 14 weeks ago, I wouldn't have bought them, but what might I have done instead? Would that have been so great? I can't say for sure.

Take a look at their faces. Do they look sad, or stoic?* Do they look like the kind of people who cry over crowing pullets (or would have blogged about it?) That man's eyes are punk rock, yelling "Bring it!" at life. The woman is ever vigilant, checking the horizon for predators. They know what most of us don't.

Don't expect me to tell you what it is they know, as I come from suburbs and shopping malls, so I'm part of the rest of us that doesn't know what they know. I never faced starvation. As a wannabe fauxrmer, I can't help but feel silly about the little ups and downs of Backyard University. Yay! We grew a pumpkin! (hopefully, in a couple of months) Look! An egg! (hopefully, in a couple of months) But if there's a late frost, or a blight, or a rooster, we have nothing but a moment of feeling bummed out. We don't have to subsist on boiled sawdust and tears, like the couple in the painting.

*Stoic is what wise people feel instead of sad.

No, the biggest loss we have to mourn is our opinion of The Urban Farm Store. They boast a 90% accuracy rate in chick sexing.* Maybe we were just unlucky, but we could have gotten a 50/50 gender split by picking chicks on a tossed coin. On the website, they also say they can take back a rooster, should you find yourself with one, but they offer no refunds. Fine, we knew that going in, so I didn't really expect one. They were easy to contact and offered to take the roosters back right away, so on that front they followed through, but I was kind of hoping for a little something more. Something like, "Oh, we sold you four chicks and only two of them were keepable? Wow. Sorry, here's a bag of feed, or another chick, or a break on the price of a $20 pullet. Nope. Nothing. No refunds, no nothing.

*What you call it when you figure out whether your chick is really a dude or not.

After returning Candy (read on to find out what happened to the Chicken Formerly Known As Cora), I walked around the store, peeking in the brooders at the fluffy puffs of cute cheepy love that are chicks, and felt a little mad at the store. I heard excited new customers picking their breeds and I wanted to warn them. I read the description cards about which breeds were good layers and I thought of what terrible layers roosters are, of any breed. What incentive does the Urban Farm Store have to make sure their chicks really are girls? In a little yard outside the store, they sell pullets (teenage girl chickens) for a whopping $20 apiece, so if anything, they can hope for a little extra money if they sell boy chicks with reckless abandon. Sure, we'll take your rooster back, now just have a stroll to the back of the store and pick an over-priced pullet to fill that void in your flock. It'd be a kicker to find out if they end up getting money for the roosters somewhere else. Thanks for raising our meat birds, suckers!

When I first called them to order my chicks, I was planning to play it safe. I knew the closest thing to a sure bet was a sex-link chicken, meaning their gender is linked to their markings, so it's easier to distinguish the she-chickens from the beginning.The store employee who took my order asked why I was ordering four Black Stars*. He recommended getting four different breeds. I admit, I didn't take much convincing, because I really wanted to see what the other breeds were all about. I trusted their chick sexing skills and decided to go for it. We all know how that went.

* What you call a Black Sex Link to avoid saying the s-e-x word.

Enough brooding! That's an inside joke and you'd have to be a chickenhead to get it. The day of pondering regret and roosters and sloppy business practices ended in a big pretty bright place known as Casa de Crowe.

This is Tawnya, and she swooped in to save the day with a charitable chicken trade offer. She said she could give a home to one of our cockerels, and we could even have one of her pullets to boot! Can I get three cheers for this awesome mom of three delightful brilliant homeschooled li'l Crowes? Three cheers for them too, while we're at it! The only catch is, Corey has to behave himself. Casa de Crowe does not tolerate roosters behaving badly and Corey needs to toe the line, or else. Yes. That. This is farm rules. You gots to mind your manners, or you gets it.

When Corey was introduced to the Crowe flock of Barred Rock pullets, he put on the most spectacular rooster show, flaring his neck feathers and getting right in on the the pecking order decision committee. He pecked and was pecked. It was all very natural. Tawnya said he settled in later and seems happy now.

Speaking of settling in, we are getting acquainted with Pippi, the Barred Rock pullet we gained in the trade. She was the littlest one of her flock and is quick! I put her in a box to take her home and she popped out before I could shut the lid! Tawnya quickly and firmly grasped her tail feathers and gently held down her lower back (like the lady in the painting above probably did a thousand times) and Pippi settled down immediately. She's in her yard with Lenore and Hot Sauce, and they have also been establishing their pecking order, albeit in a much less showy fashion.

Her markings are so similar to Lenore's, just a little more pronounced. She looks like a tiny intense version of Lenore. I watched Lenore, Pippi and Hot Sauce for a minute. They looked different than the sight I'm used to seeing. All dark colors, no more brightness of the boys. Yet, in the real world of reality, we gained a hen today. There used to be four chickens, and now there are three, but we ended up with more hens. I'll take that, and I'll be thankful for the good people in the world, like Tawnya.