Rogue Chicken (A True Story)

  Our mini-farm has been home to a flock of free range chickens for the past three years. What that means is we have fresh eggs and no landscaping. I hose the poop off the porch every few days -- letting them go free range wasn't my idea, but oh well. The girls, as I like to refer to them since they're all hens, are quite a diverse flock with distinct personalities. Some are quiet and wait patiently for me to fill the feeder, some are obnoxious and greedy, shoving their sisters out of the way to get to the choice table scraps, and one even crows like a rooster when she gets excited. Since many of them look alike because they're the same breed, we didn't give them names, with the exception of the weird-looking Silky that's huge and has a deep voice. Her name is Goonhammer.
  This story isn't about Goonhammer. This is about one of our new arrivals, an all-white hen. Just to be politically incorrect, I'll call her Cracker. With the addition of Cracker and two unnamed Rhode Island Reds last month, we had eighteen chickens in our flock. That's a lot of poop -- but it's also a lot of eggs, so we take the good with the bad.
  There's another reason we don't name the chickens: they occasionally die, and we don't want to get attached. They're not pets, they're farm animals, and we live out in the woods with foxes, possums, and other critters that find chickens just as delicious as a take-out box from Bojangles. We've only lost three in three years. A hawk killed one, one died of exposure because it got locked out of the coop on a freezing night, and one just keeled over after looking lethargic for a few days. So not a bad track record for a family of farmer wannabes.
  Last Wednesday night, our son who closed the coop reported that there were only seventeen chickens. Thursday morning's tally confirmed that one was absent. I made a list from memory and determined that Cracker was the one who had gone missing. She wasn't in the coop Thursday night, so we assumed she had wound up on the wildlife menu.  
  Five days later, Cracker turned up at the water feeder, looking none the worse for wear. When I went to close the coop that night, however, she was missing again. The next day she reappeared, joining her sisters for a squabble over a handful of cracked corn. But this time I kept an eye on her to see if she would sneak off again.
  Frankly, I was astonished that Cracker had survived outside the coop at night. The weather has been warm, but the coop protects the girls from predators. Since chickens have no night vision, they always put themselves to bed at dusk, and all we have to do is close the doors to the coop.
  Sure enough, Cracker headed off on her own and I followed her to a pile of brush wood. She crawled inside the logs and branches, almost out of sight, and stayed there. No amount of coaxing or food could get her to budge. That's when I knew Cracker had gone broody. In other words, she was sitting on a nest. A hen's mothering instincts kick in when a nest box has about seven or eight eggs, which is why it's important to collect the eggs every day. Hens don't know the eggs haven't been fertilized and will sit on a clutch until Doomsday.
  My husband moved some of the logs, reached in, and picked up Cracker, who put up quite a fuss. Sure enough, the crazy hen was sitting on fifteen of her own eggs. Since hens lay an egg about every other day, Cracker had been laying her eggs in this brush pile the entire month she had been with us. When the clutch got to seven or eight, she decided to begin her vigil to hatch them. Poor deluded bird wasn't happy to have her eggs taken away, and she didn't know what to do with herself when it started to get dark. She returned to the brush pile but my son and I herded her into the coop. I'm sure it will take her a few days to recover from the loss of her imaginary chicks.
  Surprisingly, Cracker's eggs were all good. They each sank when placed in a bowl of water -- no floaters to indicate a rotten egg. Still, it felt weird to add them to the collection in the 'fridge after she so lovingly sat on them for an entire week. Fifteen eggs! She was one determined chicken.

United We Stand, Divided We Fall: Thoughts on the Divisiveness of Anger

  If you pay any attention to the news -- granted, it's usually bad, very bad, or horrible -- you've probably noticed a lot of anger these days. Anger seems to be escalating, like an avalanche that threatens to bury our great nation. Everybody's angry. Lots of reasons why, and most of them are political, but I'll try not to get on a soapbox here and point out some things I've observed about this unpleasant emotion.
  Anger clouds judgement. People who are angry cannot make rational decisions. Try talking to someone who is angry -- tell them to "calm down" and see how well that goes over. What once was a civilized debate with two people trying to share opposing views on a topic is now a shouting match laced with profanity. There is no middle ground. Civil discourse seems to have gone on permanent vacation and taken common sense with it. You may have noticed this phenomenon every time you get on Facebook. There are more 'organizations' now that took a grievance, whether real or imagined, and ran with it, using violence to get our attention. Somehow these organizations believe that if they resort to bullying, raping, rioting, murdering, and setting off bombs in public places, that they will earn our respect.
  They couldn't be more mistaken.
  Now let's consider our nation's leaders and those who aspire to be elected our next crop of leaders: why do they keeping stirring up anger? Harping on grievances, whether real or imagined, tends to earn them followers. They speak the words that people with grievances want to hear. Words like "equality" and "fairness." The divisiveness becomes a weapon for them. Just when we've calmed down enough to start a discussion on the real issues, they kick the hornets' nest again, and the media is all too happy to help with this effort. Why?
  It's all been done before, of course. Many world leaders have preyed on people's anger, assuring them that they would have justice, that the rich would be made low, that no one would feel like an outcast or a victim anymore. They kept stirring the hornets' nest because they knew that if their rabid followers stopped a minute and really thought about what they were offering, and how it would be accomplished, that their powers would be stripped away in an instant.
  You know their names: Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Hussein. There are many more and they are still among us. Anger is the tool of tyrants. Make them angry enough and they'll never question your motives, never take an objective look at your checkered background, and believe every lie you repeat.
  Now let's consider our current crop of leaders or leader wannabes: which ones utilize all the arguments they can concoct to keep you seeing red? Which ones make you feel like you've gotten a raw deal out of life, and that the unfairness heaped upon you must be avenged? Which ones distract you from asking any questions of substance so you can make an informed decision?
  Which ones compartmentalize you by gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, income, etc.? Why do they do that? Simple, by dividing us up into angry little groups, these leaders and wannabes know we will never take the time to seek the truth for ourselves. Compartments keep us under their control. It feels like they come out with new compartments every day. The 'them vs. us' mentality is working.
  "United we stand, divided we fall" is impossible in a culture on anger. Again, the media is complicit in fueling this anger. Propaganda has always been the tool of tyrants. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for this year, but I hope that you will set the anger aside -- if that has been your determining factor -- and take an objective look at what you're being offered in exchange for your vote.