The War with the Chickens

As I write this (though I will have to post it later whenever I get access to the internet), the big white rooster is circling the building and crowing—he’s taunting me, but I’m going to ignore him. Ever since the brown hen laid her eggs in our kitchen (pictured here:)

She and her mangy chicken family have felt somehow entitled to our house as their crapping, molting grounds. I would like to point out that this whole thing could have been avoided if people had let me eat the dumb eggs in the first place…but no, we had to let them hatch because they belong to our neighbor…Now I think the chickens want to lay eggs again, and they are intent on laying eggs in our house. I am determined not to let them. Currently, all the doors in our house are tied together…why? Because none of the latches work, and tying is the only way to close them. If they aren’t tied, the chickens poke them open and cluck around the house, leaving behind trails of poo and feathers. I hate them so much.

Tied together with some wire

I went to take a photo of this door, which I tied together with a piece of string that I ripped off of the floor mat, and caught the Evil White Featherbag trying to peck through the glass. He ran off towards the fence when he saw me.

Truthfully, I started hating chickens at a young age. It started innocently when my dad shocked us all by bringing us 3 baby chicks—one for each of us—to raise in our yard in Indonesia. I’m still not sure why he did this—it is completely uncharacteristic of him to want pets of any kind, especially loud dirty ones like chickens.  I know he loves us, but there has to be more to the story. I never found out, but Dad: now is your chance to come clean.  Did someone give you those chickens in an impossible to refuse way? I understand this—after all, I did leave a lovely village with a live chicken tied on the back of our motorcycle.  Or maybe did you run over their mother on your Vespa and then feel responsible for taking on her children? Seriously, what were you thinking? The innocent joy in our little faces cannot have been worth it to you. Chicks are cute, but they grow up into ugly teenage birds and then mean, nasty chickens. Mine got eaten by a local dog, but we got a replacement chicken that we named Napoleon, as he loved to strut around the yard like he owned it. One day, completely unprovoked, he pecked me in the leg, and I, overcome with fury, chased him around the yard whacking him with a Mary-Poppins-style umbrella.  I won that battle…he never bit me again. Otherwise, there have only been one or two other episodes with farm animals and me…once when I chased some fainting goats around their pen to watch them collapse in hysterics and another time when my dad dared me to grab a nearby goose (see what I mean about him?). Aside from these incidents, I have been a model barnyard citizen.

These are the faces for whom my father bought the chickens.

Marian and I are the same height, but you can tell it's her
because she and Joanna are the ones smiling cheerfully,
while I opted for a more natural expression.

Here's the chicken-buying culprit with his girls--he still looks exactly like that.
I think he still has that outfit too.

I wasn't going to put this one, but this is the house where we lived when we had the chickens, and I'm dressed as an angel for Halloween, which clearly wasn't much of a stretch for such a naturally angelic child as I was.

Back to South Sudan chicken war--recently, I’ve been kicking them out of my house—literally and figuratively, but don’t worry: they haven’t sustained any lasting damage (yet). I have also chased them with a broom and a knife  (separate occasions). They always run for their lives, squawking loudly and shrilly and slipping and sliding across the cement floors. It would be amusing if I wasn’t so full of rage.

The other day, after I’d kicked them out 10 times, I went into the kitchen looking for some matches to light my anti-mosquito candle. The outside door was already shut tight, but there they were, planted in the corner. I’d have to untie the door and then spend the next 5 minutes chasing them around the house to get them to go out the door, and then it was too late and the light I had was too dim, so I just left them. Later that night I realized I was seething with an emotion. Whenever I have an emotion, I always have to stop and try to figure out what it is. In this case, I realized that I was furious that the damned chickens (I mean that literally—they are from the Devil) had won that round. But I am happy to report they have not won any since. Although they did leave a pile of crap outside of the kitchen door last night as an act of terrorism, which I had to clean. And to think that I felt a tiny bit sorry for them yesterday, huddled up under the truck during a driving rainstorm. True, I also laughed gleefully at their plight, but there was a spark of compassion—I analyzed that emotion too.

I try to make myself feel better by thinking of various culinary chicken delights, but still, I HATE those chickens. Someday, they are going to push me over the brink, and then that will be the day that I learn how to make fried chicken. Somebody send me a recipe, please.

BREAKING CHICKEN WAR NEWS FROM THE FRONT

This happened:

Startled by a noise in the CLOSED kitchen, I caught her RED-HANDED

Prisoner of War

Running away, flapping wildly

I swear I will eat that egg. Everyone here agrees it is within my rights according to the Geneva Convention on ethical warfare.