spring? spring?

We're waiting for spring here. It's cold, its damp, and the chickens are wandering around in the leaves searching each day for a new place to lay their eggs. So for me it is a perpetual cold, damp, rather athletic easter egg hunt, as I clamber up and down hills and search under leaves and in little gullies and crevices. Tonight later I plan to go into their hen house and grab the next-door-neighbor-rooster, who has adopted our hens and our hen house as his own, and throw him OUT, though not roughly. Then I'll be able to keep the hens in for the next several days of cold rainy weather, and retrain them to lay their eggs where they are supposed to, at home! I am particularly interested in making sure these eggs are fresh and good, because I'm bringing them to my friend Marie, who is having chemo every three weeks. Her taste has been off since the chemo, and what with the nausea and the general malaise, she says that the hardboiled eggs I brought her were among the only things she'd been eating. She'd wake up at night and eat an egg. I know that she'll be feeling better as the chemo wears off, and that her tastes will continue to change as she goes through the next chemo cycle, but I'm determined to have good fresh eggs for her as long as she wants them. It's as much for me as it is for her: it's something I can do.

Wordle on chicken culture

The Peace that Passeth Roosters

Well, we now have a peaceful home. No roosters, and just the sixteen hens pecking their way across the lawn, running under the big tree every time a leaf falls and scares them, and (we hope) going back to their routine of laying eggs. Sleep isn't disrupted any more (ahhhh--we needed that after the disruption of the Obama election, wonderful as that was).

My Buddhist thought for the day seems to apply: "The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve." - Buddha.

I do believe hens think, after their own fashion, and they are thinking now about grain, leaves, bugs, high winds (what IS that buffeting feeling?), but not any longer about roosters. Dominance and sex no longer serve as the sieve to their thoughts--just the need for food and perhaps the pleasure of each other's company.

And yet I miss the roosters. Darwin brought them back to me, as I was reading The Descent of Man this morning: "Male birds . . . possess special weapons for fighting with each other. They charm the female by vocal or instrumental music of the most varied kinds. They are ornamented by all sorts of combs, wattles, protuberances, horns, air-distended sacks, topknots, naked shafts, plumes and lengthened feathers gracefully springing from all parts of the body. The beak and naked skin about the head, and the feathers, are often gorgeously colored. . . . On the whole, birds appear to be the most aesthetic of all animals, excepting of course man, and they have nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have. . . . In man, however, when cultivated, the sense of beauty is manifestly a far more complex feeling, and is associated with various intellectual ideas." (Darwin, The Descent of Man, XIII)

Chicken Soup for the Chicken Soup Maker's Soul

What is chicken soup to the soup-maker's soul?

We took the splendidly beautiful little bantam roosters to Eli Reiff's Poultry Processing Plant on Friday, because six roosters crowing all the time, and jumping the hens, was simply too much.

The hens are happier for it, and I imagine we will both be happier for it, but right now I'm more unsettled and jumpy than happy. As I told G. when we were out putting the door back on the chicken shed after giving them a new small trapdoor (to hold the heat in the house during the winter winds), I feel "like someone lit a fire under me."

Ahh--thank you unconscious.

In the kitchen, a big pot of my chicken soup is bubbling on the gas flame, with three of my roosters in it. G. says it tastes delicious already.

Chicken soup is . . . anything but the bromide those stupid books make it out to be. I hate those titles.

Inauguration

I HAVEN'T WRITTEN on this blog for a long time, because I've been busy finishing my book on chickens. I thought I HAD finished it : only the introduction and conclusion were left to write when the semester started, and I've started back to work on my next project, giving a talk at the ASBH on graphic narrative, illness and disability.

HOWEVER: I know now that I need to contribute one final chapter to my book, Auguries, Biology, Culture: Notes toward an ABC of Chickens. The chapters that exist so far are: "Auguries", "Biology", "Culture", "Disability", "Epidemic", "Fellow-Feeling", "Gender", and "Hybridity", and I'd been planning to end there, with just a final chapter, "The Zen of the Hen," to get the concluding Z in there. I still think I will write that chapter, which will be on "just sitting" among other things, but first I need to write one final chapter, "Inauguration." Why, you might ask, other than the fact that like everyone else in the world (it sometimes seems) I've been obsessed with the campaign to elect OBAMA, and am now in that zombie-like-zone after the election that the Onion satirized so well?

ALL ALONG I've been thinking that this campaign has seemed to have endowed chickens with more than the usual amount of political significance. I've seen stories on Jeremiah Wright titled "Obama's Chickens Come Home To Roost," noticed the sudden proliferation of "Why did the chickens cross the road?" jokes that featured John McCain and Sarah Palin, been appalled by those "OBama Bucks" created by the racist southern California volunteer (was she a staffer of the RNC or merely a local party stalwart) that featured fried chicken and watermelon on a "food stamp" dollar with Obama's picture on it. But this morning when I checked my RSS feed I found three stories that have pushed me over the edge, and forced me to contemplate yet one final chapter.

FIRST, THERE WAS THIS STORY filed on "Political Punch," the blog of ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper, on October 31, 2008, at 9:49 pm.
(See http://blogs.abcnews.com/politiclpunch/2008/10/house-gop-leade.html ) Pulled by Tapper from the student newspaper of Miami University of Ohio (bless their neophytic journalistic chops!) was the report that House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio had called Senator Obama "chickenshit" for voting "present" on house votes. As Boehner put it, "In Congress, we have a red button, a green button and a yellow button, alright? . . . Green means 'yes,' red means 'no,' and yellow means you're a chicken****. And the last thing we need in the White House, in the oval office, behind that big desk, is some chicken who wants to push this yellow button." As a student present in the audience, Sophomore Laura Heins, put it, "To hear this man call this man a chickens*** in front of an audience was absolutely appalling. . . . . It angered me that he would go that low in order to promote his own candidate."

NOT ALL READERS of the blog found the "chickens***" label appalling, however. As one irate respondent put it, "Obama is a chicken and it is about time that more and more of his colleagues called him out on not voting as a State Senator or a US Senator . . . . What is he going to do as Commander-in-Chief? Play chicken . . . when the going gets tough?????" And as another reader put it, "Obama is a chicken. He is like the wimpy bully that pushes people around as long as his buddies are standing behind him. His campaign is built on lies and intimidation." A third reader returned to a familiar folk saying when he concluded, "Our chickens are coming to roost. Mr. Wright has called Mr. Obama a liar. Mr. Obama in return disowns Mr. Wright only after Mr. Wright suggested that Mr. Obama is a liar. Mr. Obama is a serial liar." And a final reader, "Clintonites for McCain," cautioned, "Chicken is a big word. My only concern about Obama is that he seems to stand (I am not saying hangs out with) a lot of punks--like Rev. Wright, Ayers, Kahlidi."

TO CALL SOMEONE A CHICKEN is, as that reader points out, "a big word." The term has been an insult since Diogenes responded with the gift of a plucked chicken to Plato's definition of man as a "featherless biped." The wordless gift said it all: human dignity could not support being compared to a chicken. It was crucial to differentiate between person and poultry. Thus rebuked, Plato added to his definition the additional stipulation: "Having broad nails." (The rejoinder is almost a gag line, for the insignificance of the stipulated detail suggests that in every other way the two life forms are as close as twins . . . )

BUT NOTE THAT Obama isn't just called a chicken, and thus by implication accused of cowardice and avoidance. He is also linked explicitly to the color yellow, which extends the connection to cowardice while broadening this to a racial slur against all people of color. (Suzanne Langer has a great rereading of Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" that makes this point, for anyone who is sceptical.) And such racism explains the image of Obama as a wimp who rules by intimidation, the fear that the "chickens" will "come to roost," revealing Obama's buddies to be not only Jeremiah Wright, but also William Ayers and Rashid Kahlidi (seemingly "bullies" for their advocacy of the rights of people of color at home and abroad). Finally, Obama is described as chickenshit, an excremental curse that compactly conveys not only abjection, but powerlessness, insignificance, impotence, and even backwater rurality.

AS I WAS PONDERING THESE POSTS, I FOUND THE FOLLOWING, from "John Kelly's Commons," a blog at WashingtonPost.com:

Inaugural Balls: For the Birds?

"The upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama allows us to have a quick lesson in Roman history. Though its precise etymology is disputed, "inauguration" is generally believed to come from the Latin for "directing the birds."

Birds were very important to the Romans for foretelling the future and discerning the moods of the gods: the way birds flew, what they ate, how they ate. (It was considered a good sign if food dropped from the beaks of the sacred chickens as they were fed. Yes, there were sacred chickens.) You still might say, after some mishap, "This doesn't augur well." Or, you might say that if you were, like me, kind of pretentious. To inaugurate means to prophesy about the future, something the Sunday morning pundits love doing.

Frankly, I know more about Roman augury than I do about American inaugurations. I think that's because inaugurations aren't really the province of the non-political native Washingtonian. They're for the party faithful, the monied supporter, the hopeful office-seeker.

Or are they? The balls might be tough to get into but anyone can watch the inaugural parade, right? Won't this particular inauguration draw all sorts of interest among natives and outlanders alike? [ . . . ] I haven't decided yet what I'm doing. I'll keep my eyes on the sky--and on the sacred chickens. What about you?"

KELLY'S FINAL COMMENT SAYS IT ALL. We still need to keep our eyes on the sky, and on the sacred chickens, in order to figure out what the future augurs. Or, as I argue in the first chapter of my book, "Auguries," the kinds of knowledge we can get from watching chickens are still a potent part of our cultural imagination. They've just expanded their prognostication potential, to include the realms of biology, culture, disability, medicine, economics, and yes, even politics.

CHICKENS CAN EVEN ILLUMINATE the strategies of Obama's transition team, or so this final article I found on my RSS feed suggested to me. Chickenmuseum.com posted this great advice for "Introducing the New Birds on the Block."

**

"Adding new breeds into your peaceful and comfortable neighborhood of chickens can put quite a rumble between the old and the new. Admit it, nobody likes newcomers. . . . . Fret not, for this kind of attitude and feud lasts only for a couple of days. . . . There are numerous peace-making strategies to help both parties adjust with each other. . . . .

"One very good strategy is to let them see each other without having any physical contact. How? If you have a run . . . you could put your old chickens there and then put a border (chicken wire) between the run and the coop. Put your new chickens inside the coop. This way, they are able to see each other minus the harm. Be sure that both parties have access to sufficient food and water. You can do this for about a week.

"As transition day comes, . . . you can now 'join' them in one arrea. You can transfer the newcomers to the resident flock's territory during the night when all the birds are sleeping. Upon waking up, the old chickens will notice the new ones and they will . . . try to start a fight but will not because they are too groggy to initiate it.

"Distraction techniques are always effective in some way. This can alleviate tactics of war coming from the resident chickens. . . .
"Some of the distracting techniques are:
a. Cabbage heads can do the trick. By hanging a piece of whole cabbage just above their head, chickens will reach it until everything is finished. That is, if they don't get exhausted by jumping to it and reaching it.
b. Make the pursuit an obstacle for the pursuing party. . . .
c. Let them run around at a wider and freer range. The oldies will be so thrilled . . . they wouldn't even notice that there are newcomers roaming around."

**

GEORGE W.'S HEAD has always seemed quite "cabbage-like" to me. But I don't think the Republican party needs him as a distraction technique. They already have Sarah Palin!

Chick Sourcing and Hen Schlepping

First, an answer to Greta, who asked me where I find my chicks, but whose question didn't permit an individual answer.

We live in Boalsburg (small world) so we have gotten chicks from the poultry auction at Belleville. It happens on Wednesday mornings: you show up around 11:00 at the Belleville market, and look for the poultry building (around behind the livestock barn). The auction will start around noon, if I remember correctly. They auction off a wide range of birds there: not just chickens, but guinea fowl, ducks, geese, rabbits and guinea pigs (honorary birds because of their size and edibility), peacocks, and I have even seen a beautiful macaw. As far as chicks go, there are three kinds usually available: large numbers of standard hybrid meat birds, bantam hen and chick combinations, standard size farmyard hens of no particular type with a clutch of chicks, and (very occasionally) pullets. I was once lucky enough to find three beautiful Buff Wyandotte pullets that had been hand raised by the 4H daughter of the cashier at the auction house. They were wonderful: tame, friendly, smart, and they laid gorgeous brown eggs. Another time I found a pair of Silkies, that went on to lay beautifully, but not at my house because my other roosters had it in for the Silkie rooster, so I had to give them away to a more peaceful home.

They also sell roosters there, and beware, if you see a box of chicks that aren't hybrids, they will often be the result of a chick-sexing wizard who has figured out which the males are in a clutch of chicks and is off-loading them before the pose a problem. Too bad, but much better than just dumping the chicks in the landfill, which is what apparently many of the industrial producers do.
At least those roosters have the chance of life, and ideally not as fighting cocks (though I know some of them do go for that.)

Now, on to a very late report on my own chickens. Last spring, we bought fifty White Wyandotte female chicks from Murray McMurray: our second year of raising our own chickens and staying at least to some extent off the grid. (Or at least knowing exactly what kind of a life our birds had: roaming outside, eating grass and bugs as well as scratch corn, and learning about life.) There is a lot I could say about this experience--for example, the poignant discovery that incubator-raised chicks who come en masse to your brooder have no clue how to deal with the basics of life. At the same time in my chicken yard I had two bantam-hen-and-chick families, and it was actually painful to see the difference in the chicks who had mothers, and those who were raised in the circle of the corrugated cardboard brooder. I did my best--warm lights, clean shavings, food and water always fresh--but they were no more educated into the world than puppies are who are raised in a puppy mill. . . .

In any case, fast forward to this spring. Most of those chickens are in our freezer, though we have eaten a fair number, as coq au vin, or roasted, or stewed. They lived for 18-19 weeks, which is longer than standard, and it really hurt to take them to our Butcher, Eli Reiff. But as I have already written, he is a gem: kind, careful, quiet, and very fast. Only two of the White Wyandottes remain--there was a third, but a raccoon got into the hen house and killed one of them. And that's when the strange new era started for our last pair of hens.

The murderous raccoon had done the killing, but then had not left the hen house. Instead, it curled up in one of the nest boxes and fell asleep. This scared the remaining chickens so badly that when my husband opened the house in the morning they came tearing out--leaving the sluggish sleepy raccoon behind them.

Now, they won't spend any time in the hen house voluntarily. (Can you blame them? I can't!) Instead, they wander around our garden, fields, woods and driveway, happily eating whatever they find and scratching for bugs with absorption. When it begins to get dark, they head into the garage, where we find them settled in for the night on a bookcase. Because we don't trust the garage to be predator-free, we have to pick them up and carry them out to the chicken house, which we carefully check for raccoons etc., and then put them on their perch.

This has become a nightly ritual. And since I'm in New York City most of the time, writing my book, that means that when my husband gets back from a day of seeing clients (he is a psychotherapist), he has to go into the garage, pick up the two sleepy chickens (one under each arm) and deposit them in the chicken house for the night.

And to add insult to injury, we can't find where they are laying their eggs now!

Just a report from the trenches.

Urban Chickens in London

Natalie Steed has posted on urban chickens in London. http://nataliesteed-lcc.blogspot.com/While I'm there this week, I want to meet up with her, and to investigate the urban chicken culture there. Are there organizations like MadCity Chicks (in Madison Wisconsin) or the Seattle and Portland chicken movements? Natalie writes about the Suffolk avian flu outbreak: I need to learn what kind of flu it was--low path I presume, but what was its type? And I need to talk to poultry people in London, Oxford and the environs.