Rain and Chickens
The skies are overcast, a heavy gray without layers. It doesn’t feel threatening, just hopeful. But, as they apparently cease to move and apparently cease to rain, the hope seems, as always, misplaced. I am now considering buying twenty ton of sand and dumping it on our hill and starting a desert based theme park. I think I could get some lovely cacti going up here. The old west of the East, that’s us. Everything green is shut down and waiting, but the year is getting on and the new shoots will be going to bark soon. The few grapes that faced the dry and the heat are ripe, but it taxed the vine even more. I probably shouldn’t have let them produce, but it was only one plant that managed to fruit, so there isn’t much harm, I don’t think. Considering the lack of the rain, most of the other vines look equally stunted now, fruit or no.
We lost a chicken on Monday. Our first adult to go. Guido, our deformed, half blind, crooked beak and toed boy who survived the slaughter by never maturing into male characteristics had such a deformed beak that he finally couldn’t get enough to eat. Add the starvation to the heat of the past few days and his poor, crooked body finally gave in. He was an amusing boy but in nature he never would have made it much past getting out of his shell. It’s a reminder that, ever so often, nature knows best, really.
In a strange commercial version of the circle of life we have, hopefully, eight day old chicks coming in today. Turkey, my Heritage Bronze Tom, had to be evicted from his little coop to make room for the new girls. He has, despite his best efforts, taken up home with the chickens. He would rather come inside the house, as we are his flock as far as he is concerned and he can’t quite understand why we get to roost in the house and he doesn’t, but that isn’t going to happen. Once the heat of the day goes, he stands in front of the sliding door and waits for me to come out and play. Poor boy needs a girl. My wife put up a personal add for a drug and disease free female Bronze for him, but, so far, to no avail.
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