Friday, November 22, 2013

Three Little Hens

Finally, I dialed a phone number and someone answered! I have been looking for a few little hens as companions for my single surviving Braveheart hen. One lady hung up on me and never called back. I am not sure what that was about. The other advertisers were too far away or did not have what I wanted. One advertiser on Craigs List seemed to be professional but there was never an answer when I phoned. I gave it one last try today and lo, a voice speaketh from the Chicken Realm.

First I talked to an older man. He was friendly and enthusiastically willing to sell me a few little hens. Yard art, he called them. He gave me overly detailed directions, including a description of driving past the "old, awful house" and "come on back - we'll take care of you!"

When I called before leaving work to confirm, I spoke to a different person, a younger man. He was a salesman! He imported his chickens from Holland and was one of only four breeders of Dutch Bantams in the country. He would give me a deal. And he tried to sell me a rooster.

Well, it was a dark and stormy night when I finally left work for the special chicken breeding haven beyond the "old, awful house". I know I am not as smart as I once was, but sometimes things happen that demonstrate how much I have truly lost. The first thing was driving all over southeastern Shawnee County because I apparently have lost the capacity to drive directly down the streets I have known since 1974. I was not lost. I simply failed to turn on the proper streets, going several miles out of my way. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, but for whatever reason, I drove through intersections as if I were on my way to a different place. I finally drove to the address and turned into a dark and narrow drive. By then it was entirely dark and an icy rain was falling.

It was a good thing the first man had warned me about the "old, awful house". It was an enormous old three story farm house that was coming down in large, square blocks of old wood. In the gloom, it was spooky. I began to worry about axe murderers who lure their victims with chickens. ("Come on back - we'll take care of you!")  If so, they were cheerful and friendly murderers.  It might not be too gruesome an end. A woman waiting for me with a flashlight showed me to the cages where earlier someone penned several little black hens. Even though the pen was under a big car port structure, their feathers were sprinkled with the icy rain. Poor little peckies!

There were only three in the pen and at one glance I said I would take them all. That is when I realized I had forgotten the transport box in the car - another indication of my foggy brain capacity. No problem. The woman scooped up two and I took the other. The little chickens were sleepy and only made a minor fuss. Cash and chickens changed hands then and I was on the road to home in the first winter storm of the season. I could hear their tiny little cheeps and mutters as they tried to deal with being rudely awakened and jostled around in the pitch black interior of a cardboard box while Joe Bonamassa played the best blues guitar licks known to mankind.

They are tiny little hens, entirely black, much smaller than crows, maybe even smaller than pigeons. The woman said they were almost full grown, but they are not mature hens. Now it is after midnight and I checked on them in the box in the garage. They are fine. When  I looked up Dutch Bantams online, I discovered that Mr. One-of-Only-Four-Breeders-in-America was either lying or seriously misinformed. Everyone is breeding Dutch Bantams. Oh well. I have the chickens I want and that is the mainest main thing.  

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Behold, the chickens came home to roost. All is right and proper with Spirit Creek.

Don said...

Okay cyberkit, they may have come home to roost, but now we have to name them so we can tell the difference between them and know if one of them decides to poop on the porch...that would be a bad hen. Right now they all look alike in that box.

Jackie said...

The new girls are small, medium and large - all smaller than the very small older silver seabrite hen (the big hen for the sake of discussion).

The medium sized hen is the smartest and bravest - first one out of the coop. When the Big Hen ran them away from a little patch of food, the med hen just ran an end game around her and kept on eating at the big patch - no sweat. The lg hen follows her lead. The sm hen is so tiny that she still makes peeping noises like a chick, poor little thing. All three of them are so small they can each sit in my palm, but the sm hen is about the size of a robin, maybe a bluejay. They are sweet natured little things. I was going to call them the Kardashian Sisters, but that's a horrible insult... Their names will eventually come to me.

Unknown said...

I am so excited to be reading about chickens again on your blog! Of course you were the main corruption---- I mean, inspirational motivation for me to get some chickens, lo these many years (4) ago. They look adorable and I hope they have long, fruitful lives -- eggs of course, but mainly reportable adventures of chicken cuteness and perspicacity. I hope Jake the Bad Dog does not eat chickens!

Jackie said...

Well, I've felt so sorry for the last surviving little hen. But of course, it is going to take a long while before she accepts new chickens. I am not going to let these chickens free range, so they should always be safe from the Bad Dog Jake and all other critters.

Anonymous said...

"What's in a name?"
From "Hocus Pocus" --Winifred, Sarah and Mary
From "Wicked" -- Elphaba, Glinda, and Nessarose
"Charlie's Angels" -- Kelly, Kris, Sabrina

Jackie said...

I loved that book "Wicked"! But those are some big, big names for tiny chicks...