Spring Chickens

 

So I am the tender of a tender flock of chickens:   some mundane, some fancy-pants.  And I quite adore them.  Someone asked me today:  “Why do you have chickens?” 

It’s a fine question. I live in the City of Atlanta, after all.  This woman lives in the southern burbs, so it was a supreme mystery to her.

My first reply is because I’ve always wanted them.  I have.  My ex had a rule about “no more heartbeats” and her rule was not ridiculous.  I am a lover of creatures.  I love the feathered, the furred, the scaled, and the creepy.

It’s amazing that I am not a vegetarian. It’s likely only because carbs make me fat.

But I love everything about recycling, upcycling,  homesteading, doing my part in the world.  Fresh food.  Fresh gardens.  Composting.  Chickens just fit into that equation all the way around.  Their poop and bedding composted is gold for the garden.  And chickens thrive on table and garden scraps.  And how cute to have chickens pecking about the yard.  And more pets make me happier.

I already have many a creature:  two cats, a feral cat, a bunch of dogs, a child, and a fish that resides in the fish tank–in a non-cruel manner.  It’s the esteemed Fish ‘n Flush. Google it.  It’s a highly awesome tank.

Oh yeah and now I have six chickens.

And they reside in the largest Rubbermaid TM container known to Womankind and sold at Wally World.  Now they are outgrowing said container and are flying the proverbial coop.

My friend Crissy says that I laser beam focus on a thing and become obsessed and research and read and live and IMMERSE myself in the focus object….and she’s right.  I did it with the chickens.  I stalked websites and images and friends with coops and chickens and I learned.  I learned breeds, coops, predators, chicken health:  egg-cellent scoop.  And I mind-scaped my coop and what I would want to see from the kitchen windows.  And it was beautiful in my head and so were the birds.

But I failed window shopping.  I have never been able to look without purchase. It’s an Achilles heel and so when I found myself at the Standard Feed Store, just an exit down from my house, I was in trouble deep.  Because there were adorable peeps and this really, really helpful dude.

Peeps + helpful dude=impulse peep purchasing.

Yes.

I left there with a chick waterer, a huge bag of “chick starter” (thinking I needed that in college), three peeps, a huge bag of straw, and a boatload of instruction.

Those chickies were pretty run of the mill (adorable!):  Rhode Island Red, Light Brahma, and Buff Orpington.  Well, I knew I needed some pastel egg layers and chickens that masquerade as bunnies.  So I took to Craigslist.  And after many reject calls, found a female baby silkie chick, my goal.

Tori Spelling wears one on her head in various photos.  She also puts it in a little black dress with pearls (and a diaper).  It looks like an angora bunny.  We had to have a crown jewel to accent our flock.

I motored to Villa Rica, which I love to call Villa Riche (said with a French accent), out of pure silliness.  There I met an odd hombre named John, from N’Awlins.  This fella had himself some hot chicks.  Most under a heat lamp.  Thankfully,  he wasn’t working on a women’s bodysuit (to my knowledge).

I said, “you have the most beautiful birds…I’ll bet you get that a lot.”

He said, “yep.”

Then we got down to bidness.  I bought Isobel the white silkie chick for seven times what I paid for my barnyard chicks.   She was the reason I drove this far for a baby chicken.

Then I spotted the Mille Fleur D’Uccle (fancy-ass bantam Belgium) and I was a goner.  When he told me that they were so gentle and lovely with children and I saw the thousand flowers patterned on the hen’s feathers, it was near to over.  Then, he put “Roger” the Mille Fleur Bantam in my hands.  Roger was tiny and exquisite and so content to have me holding his small bird body.  I was smitten.

I nearly abducted Roger and had a brief fantasy of sprinting to my car with the tiny rooster with mahogany feathers accented with little flower details.  His tail was an iridescent black/purple catching and echoing the sun.

Somehow I just sighed deeply and set Roger down. I came to buy the white silkie hen and the blue egg laying Americauna and was sucked into some Belgium cuteness.

I left with three exotic chickens.

Flash forward past my anxiety of keeping them alive, of their fragility.  Of uniting three plus the new three.  It went pretty well.   Of night terrors of the heat lamp crapping out and killing them all.  They seem pretty robust and perky and poopy and flighty.

It wasn’t long before I established my own pecking order. My little Fleur-Bird, my tiny sparrow sized bantam fancy Belgium impulse/afterthought hen, is my favorite girl.

But please don’t tell the others.

I thought that the Hollywood Isobel, the must sought-after Silkie would be the favorite, but Fleur snuck in from left field and just snatched my heart.

Why, you wonder?

She does this head- cocking and quizzical expression making when I talk to her.  She flies up on my arm and walks to my shoulder.  She loves me to pick her up and kicks her feathered booted feet out in calm trust.  She’s so little, so Zen, but has so much PLUCK and personality.

I love all six of the chickens though, I do.  They are little actors on their tiny Rubbermaid stage and in just a few short days I’ll move them out to the big stage of their newly built coop and see how things go.  And pray that all the work and sweat and blood from cutting hardware cloth, a tightly knit version of chicken wire keeps out all the hungry predators craving a chicken dinner.

But for now, the moment by moment is pretty great.  The bedroom is filled with cheeping sounds of spring chickens.

Even if I’m not one of them anymore.