I know, you’re probably thinking, “That first photo? What in the world is that?”
And, yes, my friends, you are right. It’s a horrible photo that looks like nothing. And that is the whole point of my story today. That big pile of sticks, remnants of the big wind storms, looks like absolutely nothing.
Let me back up for a moment.
We have this chicken named Blob. (Yes, she’s a girl. And, yes, that is her name. This is what happens when you let young boys obsessed with video games name chickens.)
If Sarah Palin hadn’t gotten to it first, Blob could have defined “going rogue.” We have no idea when she started laying eggs last fall, because she always laid somewhere in the woods. At first I suspected she was a dud in the laying department, but when the first snow rolled around, I caught her in nesting box. It was this huge gotcha moment followed by celebration.
So she laid in the coop all winter.
But once spring rolled around, she went back to her old ways. One day Tom found a few eggs, laid delicately on the seat of the tractor.
I’ve been noticing the absence of green eggs in the coop lately. It’s left me wondering.
Then today Neko was mucking about in the yard and suddenly started screaming, frantically pointing to the big pile of sticks. And there, in the midst of the debris, lay SEVENTEEN GREEN EGGS.
In case you don’t do chicken math, that’s nearly a month worth of eggs.
Of course, we had throw them all away, because they don’t come stamped with an expiration date. And I suspect she doesn’t lay in a methodical left to right order.
This is the chicken that is going to live until the age of 10. In addition to staying close enough to be tripped over, but just far enough away to slip past when I need to shuffle her into the coop, she will taunt me with her covert egg laying, scoffing at the whole cost of feed vs. cost of eggs ratio. I suspect we will grow old and cranky together.
There’s some nugget of a sitcom here. Golden girls with a poultry twist.
