The Chicken Haircuts

(This story was part of an email to my sister, in mid-Spring of 2006)

Now seems like a good time for a little poultry update:

The chickens got haircuts a few days ago. This will be explained in a moment but first I have to get something off my chest. It's nearly incomprehensible how dumb chickens are. On the intelligence scale, they seem to lie somewhere between a less-evolved plant and a worm, except that worms can learn to avoid dangerous areas.

Over the last few weeks, Daisy has exercised her svelte and youthful body by responding to eons-deep instincts to great advantage by chasing down chickens. These would be the ones who flew out of their carefully fenced in paddock area, which is to say five of them. The other two, now husband and wife, have been cooped up in a private hotel recently built by me. This sequestration was the solution to incessant chicken fights, engendered understandably and predictably enough by there being six roosters and one hen on the premises.

(Above: the six suitors and the hen of their dreams in happier days)

Or so we thought. Chickens had been squawking and flying out of the paddock at all hours and we thought it was due to male competition. After picking a suitor for the lady and putting them in the coop, we thought the loser boys would just settle down and peck in peace.

Not so. They continued to explore the joys of flight, and spent most of their time outside the safety of the paddock. Daisy's first success resulted in a chicken who sat frozen as she started to eat into it's back. I had to kill that one immediately out of mercy using a handy rock to the head method. Not elegant. Next she got a gay blade who again ventured out of safety and got cornered trying to walk through chicken wire. He was dispatched by yours truly who "seized" the opportunity to practice the "twirl-em by the neck" method of killing a chicken, as related to me by Mom, recalling her grandmother's technique.

We became better at knowing when a chicken was caught, by the sounds they make (a kind of contented-sounding chuckle), and were so able to get to the next bird as he lay between the paws of the slavering beast.

The next time that happened, I was able to pick up the distraught fowl, by this time with wet feathers all awry, and toss it over the fence into safety. I mentioned to Nancy that surely this ought to imprint positively on the chicken - having been literally saved from the jaws of death by a benefactor who thrust it to safety one would think that the chicken would never, ever go outside the safety zone again. But within hours three of them were strutting about on the grass outside, chortling and clucking happily as Daisy slunk again forth upon them.

After enduring sudden, alarming feminine hysteria ("Eric, come quick - she's got another one!") several times one morning as I attempted to clean the barn, I thought hard. Ransacked the mental library for ideas and finally had the brainstorm. Clip their wing feathers! That way, they can't fly out of the paddock! I proposed this to Nancy, who promptly and complacently said, "Oh, I know about that one. It's in my chicken book!"

The answer to my question, "WHY didn't you mention it before?" brought forth no satisfactory reply, and I began to think that the chickens were not the only ones having difficulty applying knowledge to life circumstances.

Nonetheless, Nancy and I went out early in the next morning and started catching chickens. This episode will make an entertaining tale by itself, so I''ll leave it to your imagination. Despite much effort and ingenuity, we had little success. My chicken catcher, a bit of wire attached to a long pole was fashioned after an antique model I'd seen in Raymond's garage, failed to function in any sense of the word. Suddenly in a brainstorm no doubt stimulated by the genius of my ancestors, I lit upon the obvious answer: use the dog. Who else is better at chasing down chickens than her?

Working as a 3 person team, we soon rounded up most of the miscreants (except for the ones looking on, eleven feet up in the branches of a young walnut tree). I grasped each one by the legs and held it upside down as Nancy gingerly stretched out each wing. Following the line of tiny inside feathers, I cut off their large wing feathers, making a pile of white detritus on the ground that any casual observer would interpret as the site of a major killing frenzy.

How we got the high-flying burrito brothers is the subject of yet another story. Suffice it to say that after 3 breathless hours of chase and drama we got them all clipped and contained. You have no IDEA how hysterical a chicken can get if it thinks you are trying to save it's neck, whereas it will lie down and let itself get eaten alive by a dog.

I keep thinking there is a life lesson in this but cannot quite grasp what it might be. However, the chickens have been safe inside the paddock and enjoying their daily struts, and Daisy has gone on to advanced hunting adventures, such as trying to catch rabbits.