Fowl Pets and Foul Neighbor

Yesterday was a lovely day, starting with a soccer game on a new team for Emily for winter, and filled with looking forward to the end-of-season party for Emily's usual team. In the middle, though, the day got ruined with a certified letter from the township. Shockingly enough, we're not in trouble for growing weeds, but for the "building" our chickens are living in.

Perhaps later, when this is settled out, I'll feel like posting the whole sordid letter, but suffice to say that the citation letter was issued "upon receipt of a complaint" and refers to "housing chicken(s) or foul" (sic). For now though, I'll simply show the non-view our more cantankerous next-door neighbor has of our coop.


That's right, she can't see it, because our shed - the one which was present when we moved in, years ago (in other words, no building permit required for us) - is in her way. We did that on purpose, of course, because we *knew* she'd be trouble. What else would we expect from someone who we've witnessed using a leafblower to relocate her leaves to our yard, who told me two springs ago "You can't keep chickens in O'Hara!", who throws sticks into our side of the property line, and who doesn't offer high-fructose corn syrup to children at Halloween?

Today, I spent way more time than I would have liked writing the township a response letter. The girls drew pictures of their chickens to support the point that these fowl are friends, not food. We went in the yard and played with them (as usual for a weekend), but this time I took my camera for documentation.



Emily found a woolly bear caterpillar, and shared it with Hazel. Emily obligingly loved on Swallow for the camera. We played hide-and-go-seek.

But, I confess, I felt watched, the whole time. The curtains next door looked closed, but she could have been watching anyway. I was planning to offer her an egg or two when we got some, before this event happened, to appease her, but of course we don't have any yet. The township may choose to make our lives difficult, or not, but no matter the result with the zoning board, we know who the real foul are around here, and they don't live in a coop.

Free-way chicken

In our neighborhood, a truly free-range chicken is a dead chicken (even yesterday, while the ladies were having a jaunt in the backyard with me nearby, a dog got loose and was caught by its owner just 50 feet away, way too close for comfort). If free-range, under government regulations, means a couple square feet of outdoor space per hen, we're all set, but with chicken wire on all sides and vittles brought in by hand, this ain't my grandfather's kind of free range.

But freeway chicken we have. Last week I engaged in an act which would have seemed unthinkable to me last time we got chickens, when I thought keeping them would be easy, that I wouldn't need to take too much trouble for them. Hazel and I drove over an hour south, to meet a colleague and his wife, who agreed, very kindly, to take in our rooster, Bolt, in exchange for a quieter (possibly) hen. Bolt was clearly going to a home where he could live his days out in poultry heaven, a ladies man to a couple of dozen hens; meanwhile, we took in Gabby, an 8 month old Delaware, as a pet to join our small flock (photographed from our porch, just next to and above the coop).



Gabby is adjusting well, leading our flock in and out of their indoor enclosure at night, keeping the others in line when they cross some mysterious chicken behavioral boundary or perhaps simply her personal space. No one is laying yet, but they seem content, making the most of the fresh fall leaves we add for them to shuffle around each day. No one is getting pecked, and if Gabby is less catchable for the girls, well, I can hardly blame her for having the sense to know trouble coming on two feet.

Most of me just feels so grateful and glad to have found a home for Bolt before his crowing got us in trouble with neighbors, and to have again an even number of chickens for our two children. I do have to wonder about the carbon footprint of my transaction: environmental ethics might have suggested that Bolt be served as dinner, locally, rather than driven by car an hour away so he could eat grain and grass for a longer lifetime with my kindhearted colleague's family. But the heart has its own logic, and mine has the logic of two 7 and 10 year old girls, whose chickens *are* pets, the consolation for a coopful of heartache in the past, whose chickens will help us learn about life, death, eggs, and nutrient cycles. In this household, driving a chicken on the interstate is just the latest strange escapade in trying to nest in our own home range.

Unveiling The New Coop

Two months ago, my colleague loaned us a book on chicken coop designs, and before we even knew we had three roosters, we were plotting which one. A year and a half ago, I was wishing we'd built a better coop before letting our flock outside where the wild things are. But now, I think we finally have it together.



It is a three-part unit, currently bolted together, but easily separated for transport. (We can just barely carry each portion between us, but we can, so that makes it mobile.) Chicken wire on all surfaces, stretched to make music when you pluck it. But there will, we assume, be no other kinds of plucking going on. These three hens (and the soon-to-be-evicted Bolt) may not be terribly expensive, but a lot of hours have been spent on their home.



Chicory and Bluebird, the Japanese cochin roosters, were moved along, generously taken in by Blackberry Meadows Farm, so we are currently down to four, and Bolt is promised to a colleague's sister, who is breeding Brahmas. But now, chickens may come and chickens may go, because we have space for them.

Now we can settle in and wait for an egg.

Making it through the week

Last night Brian and I were out late, and didn't need food when we got back from driving the babysitter home. This morning, opening the fridge was a bit of a shock, but I had to laugh. For a moment it was almost like being back in grad school.

This week, besides Halloween, I've been busy with attending the Agronomy meetings and academic advising. I've enjoyed lower-carbon hybrid commutes (car/bus on Monday; car/bike on Tuesday, both avoiding downtown traffic with different methods), and learned that a car/bike commute can be the best of both worlds (30 minutes door to door, no waiting, no traffic jams, no parking fee, biking only on riverfront bike trail, no hills to pedal). On the other hand, the car/bus commute required more exercise than I might have thought and took a full hour and a half, including my one-mile run/walk with a heavy bag to make it from the end of the bus line back to the shop where the car had gotten inspection, in time to get the girls from afterschool.


I really could have used a broom.

Taking breaks, taking stock, playing goalie

The last two weeks have been thick with activity, from grading midterms, meeting with school administrators, and fitting in a weekend in Ithaca to celebrate Brian's advisor's retirement. Meanwhile the roosters are crowing - not enough to wake us two floors up from their garage home, but enough that we fear they will not be welcome in the neighborhood as soon as our coop is finished - today? tomorrow? Progress slowed with our absence last weekend, but we're getting there. What next for Bolt the Brahma and Chicory and Bluebird, the strutting but diminutive Japanese cochins? We are clearly beyond the point of these being meat birds, but we can't quite grapple with the reality that roosters are a relatively unwanted commodity.



Having raked leaves and scraped 4" of snow off our car in the last week, I'm entirely too aware of the season changing. Yesterday the girls made a fort of leaves in the yard; last Sunday, visiting Ithaca, I felt transformed back to autumns long before our children. I wouldn't alter the course a bit, even if the trip through 36 hours of nostalgia and a lovely drive across the southern Tier expressway were welcome breaks.



Coming back this week, I missed meetings I would like to have attended, and attended meetings I would rather have never heard of. I turned in midterm grades, and made a couple of students happy while making others anxious or worse. I thought of blogging tens of times, and just made it to the computer this morning, still wondering what I could say but only knowing for certain that I have a few images to share.

Yesterday, Emily played beautifully in a tough soccer game, facing down two penalty kicks in a row (the first she caught; the second went wide of the goal under her stare). In the second half, her teammate played goalie and also stared down and then chased down a penalty kick, leaving us 3-2 against an opponent who ended the game with far more shots on goal, but just one fewer shot in the goal.

If I get through the next month without dropping any balls myself, I should be as elated as Emily was yesterday. There have been a lot of shots on goal against me in the last week, and it remains to be seen how many have been blocked.

Decision at school: not final

Apparently the school board is still trying to make a more final decision on the schoolyard herbicide application. Ask if you need more information on who to contact in our district, but seemingly they want a decision within the next couple of weeks - my guess is they're trying to fulfill the terms of their landscaping contract. A poor excuse for exposing children to an organochlorine pesticide, in my humble opinion!

Upward progress: chickens, coop, and a young squirrel

We've been up late at night, Brian and I, working hard on a long-overdue item: a winterized coop. Now fully walled and insulated, we're still working on a door (we have one ready, from Construction Junction), a roof, and screening in the base - an old desk, which had sat in our garage, acting as a home for mice, until Emily suggested we repurpose it as a coop.


Meanwhile, Bolt has started crowing, while Swallow, the lovely white feather-legged hen, continues to be a very cuddly chicken. Taylor (at left, poking her head in the picture) shows her personality daily, and is the first to come and watch whatever we're doing nearby. The little roosters, Chicory and Bluebird, are tiny but amusing in their aggressions, at times leaping in the air to try to assert their dominance over other chickens 3 times their size. They remind me of the pillbugs in Bug's Life. All of them cuddle together wearily in their cage while Brian and I use loud powertools nearby, preparing their more permanent home.

I remember, long ago it seems now, trying to treat chickens as wild creatures, which need outdoor space to roam. I'd love to give these that option, and we take them to the garden on outings as much as we can. But 1 fox, 1 dog, and 28 dead chicks later, I've realized painfully that chickens are no longer wild birds, and that they need our protection. I am sorry it took me so long to see it, but when I zipped through Bob Tarte's Enslaved by Ducks and got to his passage about bird loss to raccoons, I knew at least that I wasn't the only one to hit this realization slowly.

I was thinking about that today, even before I heard a scuffle and a squeak in a pile of leaves just beyond our backyard, and I quieted my steps as I came closer. Up the tree before me came this adolescent squirrel, eyes closed and still ridiculously top-heavy, climbing back up the trunk of the tree, to a worried looking momma above. I almost walked away before I realized I still had my camera, so I had to walk back to the tree for this photo - no zoom needed at all.


I was tempted, I confess, to pick the little squirrel off the tree, and try to tame it. Brian's grandmother had a pet squirrel for a season before it went free, and I remember it fondly; I have no doubt the girls would remember this one forever and think me wonderful for bringing it home. So it took some restraint to walk quietly away, wishing I could see it make its way up to the nest, wishing I could stroke its fur and take it into my care. But a baby squirrel isn't the same kind of pet as a chicken, and I have no desire to discover another kind of animal which I can't care for adequately without training. Chickens, a cat, and two daughters, for now, are plenty.

However, the rooster situation has led us to make plans, in the near future, to attend a local event called a poultry swap. We don't think the roosters will go over well here, so we're hoping to trade - someone, somewhere, may prefer a couple of young, well-handled and lively roosters over a couple of elderly, quiet hens. But I've heard about the temptations of these kinds of events. I'm not sure next time I will get to walk away so quietly.