Animals – Page 7 – the Dig and Flow

In Which I Become a Crazy Chicken Lady

We failed, somehow, to place the order for chicks back in February, despite poring over a hatchery website and choosing breeds and having credit card in hand. It was close to midnight, so we must’ve missed an important step, like Submit Order.

The week before the chicks we thought we ordered were due to arrive, we began to wonder why we’d heard nothing from the hatchery. A quick phone call confirmed that no chicks were in the mail. We hatched Plan B.

Over the course of ten days, I haunted our town’s feed/hardware stores, and collected five different breeds of chicks that will grow into laying hens. We built them a brooder, which now glows under a heat lamp in our kitchen. To my delight, the brooder is large enough for me to sit cross-legged, slowly reaching out a fingertip to stroke the chicks’ nearly too-soft-to-feel backs, which they tolerate when they’re sleepy.

Plan B created some mismatch in age, but the chicks have surprised me by all getting along, despite the largest being at least ten times bigger than the smallest. Our flock will have mostly large-bodied, cold-hardy, sensible birds, with the exception of two silkie chickens, which I bought on a whim, who will look like walking feather dusters.

Here they were, just a couple of days old, accompanied by photos of each breed in adulthood.

We kept Buff Orpingtons in Georgia and loved their friendly temperaments and exceedingly fluffy butts. They’re good layers of light brown eggs.

Ameraucana chickens lay green and blue eggs and remind me of baby quail, so I couldn’t resist them. They come in various colors, so I have no idea exactly how these will look as adults. Maybe like this one.

silverlacedwyandottes — nittanywyandottes.weebly.com

Our Silver-laced Wyandotte chicks seem to be the most docile of the bunch so far. They become beautiful adults, lay brown eggs, and might give the Buff Orpingtons considerable competition in the fluffy butt category.

Apparently, people love their Black Jersey Giants, who tend to be very mellow, thank goodness, because adult hens weigh a hefty 9 to 11 pounds. They lay large brown eggs and look neat.

GraySilkie — backyardchickens.com, Sundown Silkies

I cannot be held responsible for purchasing these creatures. Anyone could’ve fallen victim to their tiny topknots and feathered legs. I realize that they will be ridiculous, but it just makes me like them more. I am helpless.

How We Survive Early Spring

Perhaps it’s the curve of their peach-colored bills or the slight narrow upturn of their eyes, smiling. Maybe it’s what Stella calls their “lellow fur” or their too-big feet. It definitely has something to do with their ludicrous wings, poking fuzzy and useless from their shoulders.

Whatever it is, I succumbed to it, and we now have six ducklings living in our kitchen.

2015-03-31 17.21.27 Usually, my resistance is strong. I repeat my mantra, “All babies are cute.” The second part of that mantra, “and then they grow up,” can remain unsaid while I walk away from the cute babies. Except on April 1, when I walked away with a box of ducklings, carried from the store by a jubilant Stella.

My head has been bursting with the South’s dogwoods, azaleas, and magnolias, but my eyes meet brown fields, brown trees, gray skies, and not a single blooming plant. The air has been cold and odorless. I’ve been battling a funk that sunk deeper as the snow shrank away. Winter dazzled me; spring feels bleak.

How do people buoy themselves until spring truly arrives here? We dabbled in one tactic, visiting a local saphouse for breakfast, leaving heavy with pancakes, sausage, and generous portions of maple syrup, but lighter for the rising sweetness of trees. When another joy of spring occurred to me, I knew we were in trouble.

“At least I didn’t buy bunnies, or lambs, or a puppy,” I pointed out. Andrew—who kindly encouraged my duckling pursuit, which I did premeditate by about a week—agreed that it could’ve been worse. Ducks are smaller than lambs, more useful than bunnies, and less work than a puppy, or so we figured. I did expect them to be messy, however, and have not been disappointed.

Ducks are completely uncivilized. In our kitchen, they slap around on pine shavings in their livestock trough, always cheerful on the verge of panic. Their heads snorkel into their waterer, which turns brown within five minutes of a refill. They poop prodigiously.

Every day, Sam weighs each one on a small gram scale, tracking their growth for his science fair project. He mostly loves watching them crane their necks and launch from the plastic bowl, but he diligently writes down the numbers.

We watch them thrashing exuberantly around our bathtub in several inches of tepid water, showing us how zealously ducks really do take to water. Then they cluster in hysterics while I scoop them into a towel to transfer back to clean shavings while I disinfect the bathtub.

Then those stinky little hoodlums hear our voices and tilt their heads, lifting one eye towards our faces and peeping, “sweet sweet,” and I’m glad they’re here, warming April.

The First Animals of Our Barnyard

First, we noticed small feline tracks in the snow around our cars, leading towards the barn. We soon spotted the large black cat, too long-haired to see how bony he might be after this cold winter. Skittish, he bolted if he even saw us peeking out the kitchen window. He seemed to appear and disappear.

Next came the wild turkeys, fat bodies clinging to the spindly sumac trees behind the barn as they pecked the furry red sumac tufts. The toms proudly dangled their beards from their chests. One turkey carried a clump of burdock velcroed to its feathers. We followed turkey tracks right around the front of the barn, and over the largest drift near the old milkhouse.

One evening since snowmelt, we watched a possum saunter up our driveway, looking stoned. “Do they always walk like that?” I asked Andrew, laughing.

“Maybe he’s just waking up from hibernation,” he guessed.

The possum hunch-waddled straight into our barn. I wondered if he’d encounter the cat.

Last week, a bunny appeared. This was not a wild bunny wearing various shades of brown. We’ve seen those all winter, eating the red-berried thorn bush outside the guest bedroom window, ducking below the small deck at the side door, and trafficking under the loading dock that holds old trucks. But this bunny was white.

It just hopped out of our barn one morning, as if it had been there all along. Andrew walked out with an apple, sliced in half, spooking the bunny, and set the apple by the brick pile. The bunny emerged again; bunnies like apples.

We speculated—an escapee from the renting college student who kept rabbits in a camper until mid-December? A drive-by drop-off bunny, set free at our place by owners who were done with it? A stray bunny, busted free and gone feral?

Two days later, as the sun drew dusk down over the farm, Andrew and I stood at the bay window, facing away from the barns. A wild bunny hopped into view, visible crossing patches of snow, then hidden on the grass. Behind her came the white bunny, hard to see on the snow, but bright across the grass. He pursued her around the yard, casually, reminding me of Peter Rabbit going “lippity lippity” in Mr. McGregor’s garden.

That was the last we saw him, that symbol of frisky springtime fertility. I like to imagine that the white bunny continues to evade coyotes and chase wild lady bunnies. “I guess he moved on,” Andrew explained gently to Stella. “He was a traveling bunny.”

Animal Dreams

I sigh at the dust, collected along the rooms’ edges in white drifts that mirror the February landscape, and tracked through the house by all our feet, including the cat’s. Then I look up at the finished, primer-ready walls, and grin at Stella. “We have a pretty nice place here,” I say.

“Yeah,” she surveys the house. “It’ll be even nicer when it’s an animal farm.”

Despite her reluctance to approach anything larger than a dog, Stella dreams of animals. “Can I have two pigs and two horses? I’ll name my pigs ‘preschool’ and ‘price chopper.’ And I’ll milk my cow every day.”

“If you’d milk every day, we’d get a cow,” I tell her, knowing I’m safe making this promise. Stella’s interest in farm animals will wax and wane, like a three year olds’ interest in anything. In reality, I’m the sucker most likely to assemble a menagerie.

Since we bought this property, with its 53 acres and large barns—unfenced acres and neglected barns—everyone wonders if we’ll have animals. The long answer involves a discussion of specific goals, fencing, barn rehabilitation, water supply, desired products, time management, and other logistics. The short answer: Yes.

We will have pets that we love and animals that we eat and, most likely, some pets that we end up eating, like ‘preschool’ and ‘price chopper.’ We will probably have useful animals like laying hens and freeloaders like dogs. We’ll probably have animals we regret having, cute baby animals we can’t resist having, and animals we feel we can’t live without once we have them.

I can still feel the tug of a lamb on the bottle I held when I was six, watching her tail dance wildly and her spotted head thrust forward. My thighs have wrapped horses’ bare backs, horses with saddles, horses over jumps, on trails, in a lake, across cornfields. I milked a Jersey cow by hand one summer and rectally palpated thousands of cows another summer. I’ve butchered deer and chickens for food, and euthanized dogs and cats for mercy. My fingers traced farm kittens’ triangular tails, and rubbed the chins of cats who understood me. My arms encircled the golden neck of my first dog love and leaned against the slim black shoulders of my second; my cheeks pressed soft ears and a crooked face stripe as the dog of my heart slipped away.

I have always been this way about animals.

Now, with only our beloved old gray cat around here, we scheme about the animals who will join us. It begins this spring, with a delivery of chicks. We left our previous laying hens in Georgia last summer, and brought our meat chickens with us, in the freezer. In April, we’ll have five varieties of chickens, those delightful, multitasking creatures who will be entertaining, useful, and ultimately edible. Beyond April, who knows?

One day at the emergency veterinary clinic, my coworker asked me, “What kinds of animals will you get?” Suddenly, I felt like Tom Hanks in the movie “Big,” a kid in an adult body, alive to—and a little scared of—the possibilities. My eyes lit up.

“Any kind I want,” I told him.