Searching for Yoldash

Used to be you could identify the nutcases in your neighborhood by their gangly ham radio antenna towers and gardens with too much zucchini. These people lived within a system of ever-evolving technology, efficiency, and comfort. But they weren’t quite comfortable. With every step forward in evolution, they were haunted by a sense that something important was being left behind. They wanted more control of the things they consumed, whether it was food, information, or entertainment. Today you won’t see the ham radio towers in your neighborhood, but there are other signs. Cars with biodiesel bumper stickers. Kids almost floating off in UFO-shaped balloons. Chickens walking casually around the yard as if they were tabby cats. 

Forrest

So confession time. We have joined the ranks of crazy suburbanites with chickens.

We have three hens named by my sister who raised them from eggs in Olympia. There is Gladys the Black, Wilbur the Gray, and Forrest the Brown. Forrest was named after a character in a Winston Groom novel who in turn was named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate general and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, which as most people know is an organization of chickens who run around at night instead of day. Forrest in the novel (and subsequent movie) is a simpleton. Forrest the chicken is a simpleton even by chicken standards. Hence the name.

People today need reassurance about their food. Did my beef come from a happy cow? Did my egg come from a chicken free to walk on actual dirt? Did terrorists sneak into the warehouse during a smoke break to poison my food? When you raise your own chickens, you don’t need to fret over these things because you are in control and know all the details. Today, for example, I know that Wilbur ate nasturtiums, pears, and left-over Cheerios. I know Gladys spent her day under the Japanese maple and the Chevy Suburban hiding from rain. And I know that Forrest followed the other chickens around like a hopeless groupie.

Our hens are only a few months old, so we are still eggless in Seattle.  But I can tell you that there is much more to raising chickens than getting fresh eggs every day or an eventual Kung Pao Gladys. We have raised guinea pigs, gerbils, lizards, newts, dogs, cats, two garter snakes, even an orphaned squirrel. Of them all, chickens are the most entertaining to watch. They combine thousands of years of careful domestication with the most primitive of instincts. And when you watch them, you witness both. Chicken life alternates constantly between complacence and panic. Complacence comes from being around familiar company and not having to think.

Chicken panic has three sources:

1. Another chicken is getting food that should be  mine.
2. The neighbor dog/cat/toddler is chasing me.
3. The other chickens have left me behind.

Cats are warm on your lap, and snakes are fascinating when they lunge at a banana slug as if it were really capable of escape. But for sheer entertainment, nothing beats a chicken.  They do stupid things, which is amusing. They coo when you hold them, which is endearing. And they surprise you with their predictability. For now, I watch them and congratulate myself that one day our eggs will come from a pure, natural source, even if the truth is that our eggs still come from a faraway farm, and our hens are living it up without producing anything to pay the rent.