The only chicken I really like is on a plate, preferably fried with biscuits and gravy on the side. I never have liked chickens, from the time I was a little girl. My folks used to warn me about the roosters, saying to be careful around them because they might flog me. I didn’t know what flogging was, but it didn’t sound good. But then, with the sometimes strange logic of grownups, they would send me to the hen house to gather the eggs. I don’t know exactly why, but the hen house always seemed scary to me. It was dark and smelly and I was always thinking of getting flogged or seeing a chicken snake or getting pecked by an angry hen. My mama would go in there and reach right under those hens to get the eggs. Not me! There was always a bundle of cane poles in the corner by the door of the hen house, stored there until needed for the garden. I would pick up one of those poles and use it to pry and chase the hens off their nests before I even attempted to gather the eggs. I kept an eagle eye out for snakes, because one of the stories told about my daddy when he was a little boy was the time he put his hand on a chicken snake in a hen’s nest. So, gathering eggs was not a simple, happy task, but more like a scene from a gothic novel.
My mama, on the other hand, really likes chickens. The varmints who live around the farm really like chickens too, and gradually they have decreased the flock to fewer than a dozen hens and three roosters. So, Tim, who rents our farm and treats mama just like his own family, gave her fourteen hens for her birthday. He brought them in two coops, unloaded them and, according to her instructions, put them in the hen house for the night.
The next morning, mama turned out the newcomers along with her existing flock and it was then that things became interesting. Apparently, these new hens had never been outside in the real world. They also had never seen a rooster. And when they did encounter the roosters, they didn’t seem to like their looks because they spent half that first day chasing them all over the back yard. Mama told me later that night that they were the strangest chickens she had ever had. For one thing, they talked all the time. And they do, making that little “wraaark, wraaark” sound with their little heads turning from side to side. They also follow mama around, just like baby chicks follow the hen, talking all the while. All went well that first day, unless you were the roosters, and the newcomers joined the established flock in the hen house that night.
It was the second night that trouble began. I was at mama’s that evening, working on a jigsaw puzzle. She got up from the puzzle and said she was going out to fasten up the chickens. I was engrossed in the puzzle and didn’t notice that she had been gone longer than it should have taken, but suddenly, the front door was flung open and mama, with a big stick in her hand, burst in. Mama is about five feet tall and weighs less than one hundred pounds, but she can still outwork me on most days and you don’t want to make her mad. “Can you come out here and help me get these chickens up?” she said.
The new hens were the problem. Most the veterans were in the hen house, tucked in for the night. The newcomers were parading around the yard, occasionally going in the hen house and coming right back out, talking all the while. In the next half hour, I was reminded of one of the reasons I have never really liked chickens. I was stationed by the door and mama would round up a little group of hens and move them toward me. When I opened the door, the little groups would go inside. That was good, but the problem was that another little group would wander out the door at the same time. I really don’t know how, but we did finally get all the hens inside and slammed the door. I think next year, I’m going to suggest to Tim that a nice pot of flowers would be a good birthday present.
