Tag Archives: poultry
All will be well
My little black hen trails me, agitated by tectonic shifts in her young body: ova gathering, releasing, moving through the dark tunnel of her maturity. She has laid two eggs; still, the strange sensations trouble her. And why not? It is hard to lose your childhood, the first and least consolable grief. I cradle her, […]
Keeping busy
Not long ago, I wrote a relative in the chatty way one writes relatives, with whom meaningful conversations are apparently impossible, involving, as they might, honest emotion. She told me about the weather, and grocery shopping. I described what I had been doing, an unremarkable assortment of mostly pleasant activities: reading, writing, running, puttering about […]
Incorruptible
Spring has scarcely arrived by the human calendar, but signs are everywhere evident in the natural world. Robins are squawking in the tall junipers that grace the town cemetery, where I often walk. The songs of the other birds have become more varied; there is a hint of courtship in the air, though there is no doubt more snow to […]
Girls with beards!
We have just passed the height of catalog season, during which my mailbox was visited by the usual assortment of unwanted and thereby wasted circulars advertising Christmas deals on clothing, food and other consumables. Most of these went directly into the recycle bin, but I set aside one catalog that arrived recently, anticipating a pleasant winter night’s perusal […]
Meet me in heaven
The wind howls in the dark and up the hill she scatters, the light grey feathers touched with chestnut, specked by blood and blown, blown now, everywhere and nowhere. The bobcat killed her here, after taking her from the yard while I sat in the basement 20 yards away, watching a movie. Unhearing, unseeing, complacent. […]
In which I behave badly, and you set me straight
I have just returned from the home of my neighbor carrying The Unavoidable Gift — this time, a chicken refrigerator magnet — from her vacation in Kauai, which is practically owned by free-range chickens. Her travels, however, are largely irrelevant, because this is approximately the 164th poultry tchotchke with which my neighbor has favored me […]
Good night dear, love to you
Honey that cake you sent me surely is fine. I have been taking a hunk of it with me for lunch the last two days. The typing is faded and the paper stiff with age, though the simple signature looks as if it could have been scrawled yesterday, if people still used pencils. Roy Osee […]
A terrible thing to waste
Ever since I puckered up the courage to re-home my rooster Taz, I’ve been feeling guilty about the lack of stimulation in my chickens’ lives. He is off to a randy new free-range home that includes not only hens and other roosters with whom he might develop a bromance, but an eclectic assortment of other interesting […]
The case for chicken love
An alert friend recently drew my attention to a nationwide salmonella outbreak that public health officials are blaming on backyard poultry flocks. Not just any flocks, mind you, but those that have been indiscriminately cuddled and kissed by their keepers. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, 790 people in 48 states have […]
Molt
Fall is my favorite season, not only because of its beauty, but because it embodies the impermanence that blesses and taxes our lives. Nothing so says loss — and yet so hints at renewal — as trees again shedding once- verdant leaves whose color now speaks of exhausted potential, of depletion. Unless, of course, it’s […]
Meditatio Ephemera 