Chicken Dance
Peter B. Steiger
06/03/04

It always starts with the seemingly innocent question - "Honey, can
we go out to eat tonight?"; "Honey, can I have some chicks for my
birthday?"; "Honey, can we get a new house for our anniversary?"

I agree to the request, being the beneficent king of my castle, and
no sooner than I stamp my signet ring on the order do I start to
regret the decision.

Sure, she said she would feed her chicks every day and play with
them and they would never make noise or make a mess of the house;
besides it would only be a half-dozen or so and they're just a few
dollars so what harm could it do?  By the time they're grown we
will have a world-class chicken coop outside for them complete
with air conditioning, cable TV, and little exercise wheels for
them.  How could I say no to a simple little request like that,
when my wife is looking at me with her patented sad puppy eyes?
Besides, I figured it would be worth a few bucks to see the 
look on her face when it came time to rip the intestines out
of those feathery bodies to make chicken dinner.

True to her word, Sylvia only bought a six chick mix (thank you,
Theodore Seuss Geisel)... the first time.  But, like the caffeine
addict who has to stop at Starbuck's just one more time on the
way to work, she kept going back, and bringing home a few more
chicks each time.

Before I knew it, my castle had been overrun by a horde of 20
chirping balls of fuzz that leave far less cute balls of something
else every 19 seconds.  The kids discovered this trait in a hurry
when they posed for some pictures of the birds sitting on the
kids' heads.  We got a picture of the smiles; we should have
also gotten a picture of the look of horror and disgust that
followed.

Still, they were cute little things, and didn't take up much
space.  Sylvia put them in one of the boxes we used for moving,
and each day moved them between boxes so she could change the
wood shavings on their floor.  She was doing such a great job I 
didn't even notice that her box collection included the box I was
going to use to ship a broken computer back to my employer.  That
box is now now far too... aromatic to use for shipping anything.

After a week or two, though, they outgrew their cardboard boxes and
had moved to an expensive new plastic bin.  They were still mostly
fuzzy, but some of them were sprouting feathers and their frequent
little surprises on the floor of their bin (and the kids' hands) 
were no longer so little.  I had hardly finished counting up how
much these "free" eggs were going to cost me before they had
outgrown the plastic bin and we really, REALLY needed to get them
out of the house and into an outdoor home.

When my wife plans to do something, she doesn't just throw together
any old parts and whip something up quick-and-dirty; she reads five
million pages on the subject, spends 80 hours a day working out 
the details on her computer, and buys up every possible tool and
part she might need to complete the project three times over.  So
the next thing I knew, we were buying ten thousand dollars worth
of lumber and tools from Chicken Coop Depot for the chicken
equivalent of Trump Towers.

I was of two minds on this.  On the one hand, part of me wants to
spend the money on things like food, specifically Diet Coke and
pizza; on the other hand if we don't get this herd of clucking
monsters out of my house there's going to be bloodshed faster
than you can say "Buffalo Wings."

Unfortunately, this elaborate plan for a Hen Hilton meant we 
could not just whip something together in a few hours; instead
we had to plan several days worth of construction.  So of course
our 5-year drought ended and the heavens opened up from that 
point forward - rain, hail, even snow the last week of May!

As a stopgap solution Sylvia went where everyone goes for a
larger indoor chicken coop, the children's resale shop.  She
came home with a playpen big enough to give those birds some
room to stretch their feathers, but still they grow and grow;
this week we have to be careful tiptoeing around their playpen
for fear we'll disturb them, which results in an ear-shattering
chorus of mixed chirps and clucks (their voices are changing)
and a huge cloud of feathers that billows up when they start
moving around.

Speaking of bloodshed, we did have to cull the herd a bit
when we discovered three vampire chickens among them.  For
a scary few days we kept finding fresh blood and open wounds
on the backs of several of the hens, and managed to catch
three of them in the act of pecking at their sisters.  Those
three were banished to the old plastic toy bin that was their
former home, and we sent them off to a foster home in the
form of some fellow homeschoolers who don't mind the extra
work it will take to stop bloodthirsty killer chickens from
tearing each other to bits.

We did manage to get a "daytime only" pen up made of a flimsy
frame surrounded by - who would have thought, chicken wire of
all things.  There is no protection from predators, so we can't
leave them outside overnight, but first thing in the morning
the kids load up the former chicken bin - the one before the
playpen - and haul our herd out to the yard, where our Border
Collie-and-who-knows-what mutt paces around the fence with a
fanatical intensity.  She has waited her whole life to put
her herding instincts to use, so she's ready to pounce the
moment one of her charges sneaks too close to the edge of 
the fence.

This explains why I went out yesterday for lunch to find
the dog watching the chickens and my wife and kids watching
the dog with equal intensity.  Since at that point I was
watching them watch the dog watch the chickens, I figured
it was only a matter of time before the chickens decided
to watch me and complete the circle.

Make mine extra crispy.