THE BEST LAID PLANS PT. 3

 

 

     Hiram was next to arrive. A bantam rooster with deep red and blue plumage, he had narrowly escaped ending up in a soup pot when an ad pleading for somebody to spare him this fate caught my eye on Craigslist. Even though I had no interest and less desire to own a rooster, I found myself responding. Just like with Junior and Jellybean, I just couldn’t help myself. The next thing I knew, I was making arrangements for Hiram to be brought out to live with my ducks. 

 

      If I had held any doubts about Hiram being able to hold his own with the ducks, he quickly proved that I had nothing to worry about. He wasted no time in assimilating himself with his new flock and, as far as he was concerned, he was a duck. Everywhere the ducks went, so did he. The ducks didn’t mind, even if he did seem a little odd, what with his stopping to crow every so often, once he learned how. They weren’t quite sure what to make of that. I mean, why would he need to puff his feathers, throw his head back and emit those raucous sounds? It probably made no sense to them. They probably saw no point in such behavior. Hiram, for his part, no doubt couldn’t understand why his flock would happily frolic in water of all things. Did they realize what they were doing? Had they not heard the old saying, “madder than a wet hen?” Alas, they came to an agreement of sorts that Hiram would crow whenever the notion struck, which was often, and the ducks would be free to swim all they wanted.

     Eventually, hens joined the now growing farm as I thought Hiram would appreciate some of his own kind. I had envisioned him lying in the sun alongside his harem in a state of bliss that only a free ranging rooster with a bevy of hens at his disposal could experience. Hiram, however, could not have been less interested. He was a duck, a crowing, water hating duck, and how could I have been so foolish as to not understand this? Though I was a bit disappointed in his lack of enthusiasm, I was not to be dissuaded. I was learning as I went along, and I found that I liked it. Chickens were a lot more interesting than I had ever given them credit for. Maybe, just maybe, I was becoming a farm girl.

 

 

 With all those birds, we began to get more eggs than we needed, so I started to sell the extra to colleagues at Womenspace, the domestic violence agency where I also volunteered. They thought of me as a farm girl. Perhaps they were on to something. This way of life, unplanned as it was, definitely seemed to agree with me and I wore my newly minted designation with a bit of pride. I even began to write a column for the agency’s monthly newsletter about the happenings on “This Here Farm” that was met with great rejoinder. Little did they know how little I knew.  Little did I know how little I knew.  My education was far from over as the next new arrivals would prove - more than once!