Thick shells are a sign of a happy chicken, but our flock would never support that claim. They squawk at their gate with such conviction that I’d swear there’s a rooster among these hens, but I knew all five would grow to be girls because golden comet chicks of this color are all pullets. They’re grown now and lay, no wattles or spurs among them, yet one has taken it upon herself to be top biddy of the group and won’t shut up. I wouldn’t mind so much if it weren’t for the neighbors. It’s a strange sight to see chickens in a suburb backyard and our new neighbor is from up North—New York City, even—and I hate to hear these girls disturbing anyone’s peace. I know those new neighbors must think we’re one shade away from crazy to keep chickens in our backyard. And I do agree.
I thought the chickens were a bad idea too. It was all my boys’ dream and when my husband stopped saying “no” and switched up to “we’ll see,” well, then it was over. They’d give me no rest until I put together a plan and a coup and drove down to collect a box full of chicks for the cat to stare at with big, black dinnerplates for eyes. I told them that I was the only one who knew what a pain chickens are because I helped raise them on my Mewmaw’s farm. And I clean enough shit that ain’t my own and I wasn’t keeping up with the chicks’ ammonia-smelling goop or collecting any eggs or feeding anybody. That was a lie, of course. The boys cuddled their chicks up in the evening and went off to school the next morning, leaving me to make sure that dinnerplate-eyed cat kept her jaws closed up and the heat lamp didn’t catch the cedar shavings on fire in the brooder box. And I’ve been the one tending to the flock ever since.
Those chickens grew to full-sized hens and moved outside (thank God) but became disgruntled because I only fenced off the whole dang side yard for them to run around—way bigger than the shoe box they’d be in on a factory farm—and they want the whole backyard to eat all the grass and blueberries off my bush and tomatoes straight from the vine. Tomatoes are nightshades and supposed to be poisonous to chickens, but it didn’t seem to bother them none. They’ve survived so many things that should have killed them. Did you know they ate straight chlorine one time? I’m serious. They’re always in everybody’s business and my husband was putting a new chlorine tab in the pool skimmer. He wore gloves to protect his finger and, what would you know, those chickens ran over and pecked it out of his hand when he glanced the other way to dump out a netful of leaves. You give them what they ask for and it’s never enough. One time when walking back from the busstop, we saw Nugget strutting around the front yard. She’d hopped the six-foot privacy fence and moved onto forage all the grass in her new world. Those chickens are worse than a plague of locusts on the plants. It doesn’t matter if you give them the whole back yard—then they want the front and then expand to the neighborhood. Before you know it, it’s Animal Farm, but the chickens are running City Council meetings, not the pigs.
Maybe it isn’t the noise that gets to me. Maybe it’s because I try to give them the happiest home and I’d never demand a thank you from livestock—gratitude would be an absurd expectation—but I just don’t want the insults. It’s never enough. Appeasing them with blueberries very well may reenforce the bad behavior. Today, though, I heard a holler from the girls that hadn’t come from them before. It was shrill, full of terror, not heckling or demanding. I ran out back to find one-two-three-four hens huddled up yelling a concert poolside. One missing. There, in the deep end of the pool, the fifth lady bobbed up and down surrounded by thin ice and flapping frantic wings. I ran straight out there without any shoes or second thoughts, jumped straight into the water to scoop her out. The cold stinged all over, but I could hardly think and cradled her close. It was Phoenix. Us both sopping wet, I rushed her inside and wrapped her in towels. Phoenix shook fiercely, her swollen eyes closed, her yellow, scaly legs icy cold, and her downy feathers holding in all the water. Don’t go. Don’t devastate my boys. Don’t leave us. My first chicken I raised on the farm, Aphrodite, was a sweet thing, but a different breed than the others (barred rocks). And they plucked all her feathers and then her skin and then her eyes. I lost her due to infection. Now I needed to get Phoenix dry and raise her body temperature, but not too fast. I set her on the bathroom counter and dried her with the hair dryer on the lowest setting. The gusts of air pushed away her feathers to reveal her pink, vulnerable breast. She slowly came to as her feathers dried. And when she seemed alert enough and only damp, I swaddled her and brought her to the warmth of my chest, she a chick again under my watchful eye.
So I’ll take the noise until I can’t and let them into the yard and hope they don’t run away and, with their freedom, take off with down the road with my boys’ hearts and pray the neighbors don’t mind and watch all the grass turn to piles of dirt that wash away with the rain and enjoy some scrambled eggs, just like Memaw’s, that are mighty hard to crack because those shells are so thick.