In my mojo-less blogging hiatus, a few things happened with the chickens. Last week I alluded to the grim demise of Betty and the loss of a mystery chick but I thought I ought to give a status report for the people who might, for whatever reason, be curious about what remains of the three chickens we started out with: Betty, Boo and Abby.

We began letting the chickens roam freely all day between the woods and our garden. Like girls at the mall, they explored in chatty unison and fluttered squawking into the cedar boughs when the boys chased through the yard weilding light sabers and baseball bats. We don’t have a particularly bad problem with marauders invading our yard (just little boys) so it seemed perfectly natural to allow the chickens to peck here and there, nitrifying our soil and plucking up beetles.

But we returned one morning to find Betty slain at the edge of the yard, and we figured it was a pedestrian accident (although the chickens had never strayed close to the road before). We were all very bummed, well duh, so we drove immediately across town to the feed store so we could patch up the broken hearts in the backseats and get three new chicks: a Cuckoo Maran, another Auracana and a Golden Laced Wyandotte.

When we returned with our peeping little box of chicks, Abby and Boo weren’t in the yard to greet us, as they usually do. When Damon searched the perimeter for the missing pullets, we found Boo at the end of a trail of brown feathers, lying much like Betty had on the side of the road. We had been wrong: it was either the work of a dog or a cat, who had carried the hens to the edge of our lot before losing interest or appetite (which helped us rule out a hungry coyote).

A few days later, in the brooder, the Wyandotte chick was just lying there, heaving with both eyes closed. Damnit! To explain my swearing, I briefed Ford so he could part with his chick. Heartbreaking! Boxes of kleenex! Help! Parenting sucks!

The crux of the chick tragedy, as it turned out, lay not in the infection but with the senseless way I fumbled rehydrating the poor thing: trying to administer a few drops of water into her beak with a syringe, and watching with confusion as she lifted her wing, then raised her head, opened her eyes at me, and collapsed. I drowned her.

So we survived with a lump in our throats through another few days, shellshocked and expecting more grim findings whenever we checked on the chickens. Within a few days, my brother folded his plans to raise two chicks of his own in his backyard in south Austin. An HOA dispute. So he arrived with two new Araucana chicks and a coop. We painted it mustard yellow and started laughing at how ridiculous it was that we now had eight chickens, about how funny it is that you can never go buy one chick at the general store: you must by in multiples, think like a farmer. Always account for random plucking.

One morning I carried the now-heavy box of growing, agile chicks back outside from the garage brooder (where we keep them, at night). I smuggled the alpha chick into the coop first, only to watch her fly immediately back out the coop door and into the bushes, where she began a screaming that arced across the lawn behind me and towards the woods. Eyes following ears, I watched a tabby cat steal away with the screaming chick in her mouth, weaving quickly into the shadows. I picked up a branch and hollered after the cat, ramming it with the blunt end of the stick and dislodging the chick, who immediately ran for cover under the canoe.

Good news! With some boo-boo bubbles (a great thing to have on hand) she healed beautifully within about a week. We now call her Thelma. She is no longer alpha. She is no longer pecking Abby in the eyeballs and challenging her every move.

Moving along. This is Louise, the cuckoo Maran. She is a lovely little chick who will hopefully survive to lay chocolate-brown eggs.

This is Lucy. She is the cover girl of the Auraucana bunch, which is to say, rest rest are all Araucanas. They will all lay blue-green eggs in March or April, if they survive.

There are others: two identical chicks we call Pepper and Curry. There’s a large and dark brown chick who quickly became alpha in Thelma’s stead, and her name is Mona. And last is the runt, who is always whiny and always feels an ounce lighter than the rest, and her name is Whiney. In case you wanted to know all of this.

They really like sliced tomatoes:

Our new system of protection is humane but a disappointment: we are keeping them mostly in their coops, where they get plenty of fresh air and sunshine, but not a lot of scratching dirt and certainly not a lot of freedom. But they are safe from dogs and cats and coyotes and hawks. And we do occasioanlly let them all run about, when we’re doing yardwork and the like. And only on special days do we allow Abby to play with the chicks (you’re really not supposed to do this, because the little ones can get picked on, but Abby is surprisingly sweet in her disposition and alltogether outnumbered).

A circuitboard made of white foam and leftover yarn that Ford’s friends made during his birthday party; Chas’ wild volcano painting, originally with volatile sound effects; A featherwreath adorned by Betty and Boo; Ford’s rock collection: “magic rock,” amethyst geode, coral from Galveston, birthday geode from CZ…

Our Fall nature table. Little Ivy Elizabeth Walker, Ford’s favorite character last year from The Village, sitting on the resting rock in the middle of a little Hill Country glade; Burr oak and Post oak acorns from around town; Edwards limestone; Ball moss from everywhere around town; chickenfeathers and unknown native grass, what I pretend is a White-Tailed deer…

at Ivy’s feet: “HEXAGONS!” that Chas found on our walk through the neighborhood (courtesy of a sunbleached, long-dead armadillo skeleton)…

Gretel, another storybook favorite, plays cavalier atop Big Billy Goat Gruff; and no nature table in our house is grounded without a chicken.

It’s mid-August and we’re roasting under happy white hot skies with evenly-spaced, cottony clouds. And it’s dry. Natives hark back to the 1950s and dust storms and hectic farming, and they get giddy about gray clouds on the horizon but are too supersticious to predict rain. When the clouds pass overhead, they spit fat droplets that pat the pavement and vanish magically, evaporating before you can call it rain. And then you sigh and shrug your shoulders.

In the morning, I crawl downstairs to start a pot of coffee and let the hens out for the day. Almost immediately they run for respite in woodier shade, and I start watering the deer-picked, rabbit-picked, chicken-picked truncation of a summer garden: wrinkled and dark green, prostrate. Within minutes, the cicadas start humming a low, warm-up drone. Like dry beans shaking in a parched pod, the cicadas rattling trance intensifies as the heat sets in. I slink back inside.

Chas wants to be outside at all hours, so for him it’s all a matter of being buck naked out there. I have no choice but to follow him with a tube of sunscreen in my back pocket and a narrow set of eyes, since the job mostly entails shepherding him out of direct sunlight. Which is difficult, really, because our yard is mostly sun. He glows in the sunshine, his white back reflects the entire spectrum of light as he examines a pillbug in the brown grass, something the hens must have overlooked; they’re busy meanwhile under the boxwood, flinging dusty mulch onto the walking path as they burrow six inches into the landscaping. I re-pave the path with the broom as I return for cover, my feet now dusted with roasted umber dust. Chas runs in my wake, the chickens flurry from the hedge to follow him, but the door closes. From inside, Chas laughs at the unaffected triplet standing on the doorstep, wasting little time before they start scratching again and picking at the potted ferns.

The chicks are hardy in the heat. This has been the hottest week this summer and they’ve spent the whole time outdoors in their new tractor. I’ll return home at noon from the gym, walk barefoot to the edge of the deck, and peek down on them. Looking back at me are three chicks that are always an ounce heavier, more feathered and panting with open mouths. Every few hours I give them cooler, fresher water. I love the way they peep quietly as I move about, rinsing and rearranging.

We’ve been terrestrial lately, despite the heat outside, tending droopy plants, cultivating the soil, digging. We have a few good books to inspire more curiosity and garden-play: Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin, and Thumbelina, by Hans Christian Anderson. Ford digs Thumbelina. Yak yak. We haven’t yet made it to Microcosmos yet. Then, of course, we have all the nonfiction we could need at home. The huge sci/nature nonfiction library in our bedroom: that would be my fault.

This afternoon, Ford and Chas helped me pin together a 3x4ish compost bin out of some remaining galvanized builder’s cloth. Once we’d finished, they helped me rake leaves and pile them into the compost bin. Somtimes they’d run through the piles and the lawn would look no different than it had before I’d organized the chaos, and a fuse would blow in my brain, but I’ve been more mindful of my wiring today. I’ll have to write more about that later, about what it’s like lately, ramming horns all day with the four year-old rebel. But right now I’m slipping like mercury through planks of burnout. And I’m falling asleep. But god, he has his Hallmark moments, too:

We’ve lived in this rental house for a year now, and the place is finally beginning to fit like a glove. Though a temporary rental (we begin building this year on a lot down the road), we have given it our patina. We have adopted and lost two pet fish here, but also begun raising the chicks, who have, for their part, done a tremendous job connecting us with the outdoors. In mid-July. In Texas. Which seems entirely difficult, given the heat, but by God we have learned to enjoy it and sweat it out. By the bucketsful.

Today in a tube dress, straw hat, pigskin gloves and flip flops, I cut and nailed rolls of galvanized builder’s cloth to the pesto-colored poultry tractor. As I tatted away in the shade, the little chiquitas chased each other for earwigs, sometimes peeping quietly by my side, asking for a wing. Boo, the bold one (because they really do have different personalities), flit perch-by-perch to my neck, where she inquisitively pecked at my moles and freckles. The other two weaved around the timber, little Buffalo shortshanks they’ve become, content to scratch around my workspace, dusting themselves occasionally in a patch of dark topsoil, peeping their quick, velvety peeps of contentment.

I’ve gotten to know the deer, who rarely make themselves seen anymore, much less sleep with their twin baby fawns out in our front yard (they did this daily, last year) but still continue to eat the runner beans, flowerheads, morning glories, sweet potato vines and god-knows whatever gourd/pumpkin/squash seedlings I tried to grow from seed. They continue to surprise me, sometimes grazing feet from me as I jog along the trails, with their fawns stumbling close behind them and at other times, sneaking about like elves in the moonlight, grazing tiptoe across the lawn.

I am finally proud of the boy’s room. Finally, because it has never felt, no matter where we have lived, to be their own– it has always been a post between travels: en route from the bathroom, to fetch a toy before going to the living room; the halfway point between breakfast and brushing, where they can dilly dally five minutes while I clean, playing with forgotten toys. Never has their room been theirs in the sense of belonging until we added the bunk bed. That was two weeks ago.

In the time that’s passed, since the purchase of the bunk bed, the room has taken shape into a sleep playground and a place to stay and play. The quilt my mother made during the 1972 summer Olympics (when she was pregnant with me) is now draped over the top bunk rail, making Chas’ lower bunk the sleep fortress. Before naps I lay there and read to them as they scramble over me like lion cubs, and I, heavy with exhaustion, lay there and read. At night, I sit at the foot of the bottom bunk, reading Grimm and Anderson by the light peeking out of the closet. I’m surrounded by goose down and log pillows and quilting and childbreath and the warm pads of feet resting against my legs. Ford is content to lay in the bunk above while I read “because there are no pictures in the book” but also because he delights in his new space to sleep. The sleep king, who has to be awakened in the morning because he is so heavily renewing his energy during the night.

When I pause mid-Ugly Duckling, I ask “Ford?” and listen for an answer. Only the soft sound of a stuffed nose: slowly in, slowly out, waltzing in the summer nightmusic of the air conditioner, turning pages and other little snores here and there (I think Damon must be asleep, too, now). I reach over to rest the book under the bed. The floor beneath the bed has become a charter library: The Story of Pooh, The Story of Ping, Aeson/Grimm/Anderson classics, Baby Animals, Hedgie’s Surprise, Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek makes a cameo appearance.

The place feels like home in the way I’m starting to settle in: a mixed bouquet the color of sunrise on the kitchen table; the way I can make stovetop coffee blindfolded; clothespin artwork to the back deck’s lattice, and hang my jewelry to a piece of driftwood in a windowsill in the bathroom; I smile to see Damon shepherding his harware in the garage, replacing stagnant unused stuff with the stimulus of welders and grinders and routers and saws, all in singlefile attention. Some people settle in quickly to a new domicile, but I think we’ve grown jaded to constant change. After all, we lived for a year in a 22-ft. trailer. With a baby. We want a sense of permanence so badly against the the tech industry flux. Here, we can at least afford to stay; it’s now only a matter of believing that roots are, beneath all our lingering doubt, indeed growing.

I’m sensing that a few of you may be brewing a little chicken ideas in your mind, dreaming up having a backyard brood of your own. After all, it’s a great idea. Pest control. Companionship. Eggs. That cute sound of gossiping hens in the middle of the day. It’s really cute. Well, if you are thinking about housing options, let me share a few links I’ve used.

We’re building what they call a chicken tractor. It’s a henhouse that you can move throughout the yard, so the chickens always have a fresh patch to scratch on. They’re just as safe as a regular henhouse.
I like the ones below, which obviously required more time and labor to build. We don’t have much of that around here, which is why ours is, well, amateurish. But the hens will love it anyway. Here’s my thirty second link list:

Chicken tractors
Chicken tractor project idea
& etc

And here’s an article about the benefits of using a chicken tractor to benefit your soil.

I’m sure you can google all you want and find a good clutch of ideas out there. I say go for it. And let me know if you, too, decide to get a few chicks. We’re having a blast! Now, off to add the chickenwire…

I got a blob of paint in my hair. On top of my head it looks like green bird poo. How does one get exterior water-based latex paint out of hair? Or maybe I’ll just have fun explaining to people how it got there. Any suggestions? It’s just not silly enough that I got it while painting a henhouse.

edited to add: the paint came off after I washed and dried my hair. I was able to slide it out gently, running the globs down the strands of hair 😉

No time. Gotta run. More SPC. More later.

Damon thinks the chicks will be gone in less than four weeks. Such shallow hopes! Still, he spent another day grunting in the oven outside, throwing lumber around like an ogre and eyeballing his way through his final weekend project. Which was more a honeydo than a “project” in his queue. But the reality was that I was too preoccupied doing God-remembers-what inside with the kids, probably sitting inside under a ceiling fan with a child on each lap, sipping iced tea, laughing about how crazy Daddy was to be outside in the sauna, sweating over a heap of lumber.

When he’d thrown in the towel for the day, after completing the first phase of construction, I stood back and grinned at the expressive fabrication. I’m usually a perfectionist, but I found the artsy, passive-aggressive unevenness oddly charming. Or maybe I was just very grateful that he had spent his entire Sunday afternoon laboring over my whimsical chicken fancy.

This design is an A-frame chicken tractor. It has hanndles on the bottom so you can move it around the yard. Encircling this frame that he built will be chicken wire, even on the bottom, for predators. We’ll find some scrap wood and I’ll get the kids to help me nail together a ladder, so the hens can scamper up to the little roost at the top. And looking at it now, this will certainly be a feat–can you see what I mean? Look how steep that grade is going to be?! Oh, dear. And hopefully there will be enough room for three hens, but we can always add another loft, if necessary. We, meaning Damon.

So, this evening at the local DIY megaplexx he helped me wrangle children and pick out a buttery avocado exterior paint that will weatherproof the lumber. Such good taste. And all for a mere four weeks. P-sha!

On the drive home, as the kids fought over who would hold the chicken box on his lap, I began to doubt the success of the kids with the chicks. I figured it was a good idea I’d arbitrarily chose three versus two chicks: one would certainly meet its fate under one of the boys, and being left with two chicks is far better than being left with one.

But I may be wrong. In fact, the prognosis is GOOD. I watched them with a smile all day long, as they gently trod around the garden, the chicks weaving in and out of their footpath. They encouraged us outdoors the entire day, and I found time to rearrange the rosemary and trim the papyrus, harvest parsley bolts and this and that. Ford mentioned “I never knew there were SO MANY BUGS in our yard!” because the chicks: they never stopped harvesting them, too.

Ford is, to my surprise, the new mother hen. And he’s a natural. To watch him cradle the chicks, or sprawl across the grass while the chicks scramble over him, for hours at a time, and compare this sight to the same child in a playdate full of little boys: one would never suspect the two images belonged to the one Ford. But it’s true. He’s come into his new role with all the fever of a new mother. Periodically, I’d have to come outside and feed him a yogurt or a half-sandwich because he was so preoccupied with shepherding the chicks.

But, as it turns out, they follow Ford everywhere; there’s no need to chase them down. They believe that Ford is the mama hen and will run up to his feet, peep imploringly with pinched eyes, and all he has to do is pick them up before they drop their heads on a thumb and fall asleep. Ford looked up at me after his pullet, Abby, fell asleep this way. He had reddish purple circles under his eyes, his face flush with afternoon sweat, dry grass dangling from his knees. “Don’t you just love the baby chicks? I’m not going to let anything happen to them.”

He is drinking water from a glass right now, pausing after each sip to raise his chin to the ceiling and gulp it down, just as he’s seen the chicks do when they drink from their shiny metal tray. He licks his lips and smiles, and I wink back. As I read him a new book at bedtime, he reaches over and pecks at my arm with his fingers. He’s just so impressed with his new brood. For fun, I paint little glittery dots on his finger- and toenails, and we’ll wait to see how the chicks respond tomorrow. But the young Mama Hen needs to go to sleep. And so do I. Tomorrow we build the coop!