CHICKENS
Mama Ponder decided one day that what we needed around here was some chickens so we could have some meat that was healthy, fresh and tasty with fresh eggs to boot. Everybody knows that free-range chicken is the best tastin' chicken you can eat. Free-range chicken, for you city slickers benefit, is chickens that ain't kept penned up all day and fed 24 hours a day so they grow off faster for the market. Nothin' else would do her, but get some dadburn chickens. So we did. First we had to build a hen house to protect them at night and so they would have a place to lay their eggs all in one spot so we could harvest them lil' white boogers easy, don't ya see? That beats peepin' under ever bush and in ever weed patch tryin' to find them eggs.
After we finished that, we ordered some fertile eggs and borrowed an incubator and commenced to hatch them lil' boogers off. We ordered more than one batch. Well, the incubator screwed up on one batch and only one egg hatched from that batch and the rest were spoiled. This one chicken was a runt and a loner. It also turned out to be a tad addle-brained. Mama and Dorey raised that one chicken personal and named it "Drumstick." Well, right then and there, I knew ole Drumstick's ass would never land on our dinner plate.
Ever thing went fine until the chickens got large enough to put in the henhouse instead of being kept in a coop. The first night they were in the hen house, weasels killed 29 out of 50 chickens. They didn't eat them, they just killed them. They all had their throat tore open. That's when we started orderin' additional batches of eggs to hatch to keep ahead of our casualty rate. I inspected that henhouse inside and out from top to bottom and never could figure out how a full growed weasel got in there in the first dadgum place. But I knowed it did. So I finally just lined the whole inside of the henhouse with chicken wire to keep those damn weasels out.
The last batch of chickens that we ordered were Domineckers. We got one real good rooster out of that batch. He was a humdinger of a rooster. Watched over them chickens real good and warned them when a hawk was anywhere near and that damn flock of chickens would suddenly shoot off into ever direction and disappear in the weeds and under bushes. The lil' chicks would do the same 'cept they hid under leaves, twigs or a big blade of grass. We kept that rooster as long as we kept chickens. He was very protective of his flock. He was so protective, he didn't even want us around his flock. That speckled lil' devil didn't bother me 'cause I just bowed up right back at him. But he took particular delight in chasin' Mama Ponder away from his flock. One day Dorey and I were working in the front yard and here come Mama Ponder trottin' 'round the corner of the house just ah dadblamin' this and dadblamin' that with that ole rooster right behind her all bowed up and trottin' sidewise after her. Last I heard as they disappeared 'round the far corner of the house was Mama Ponder saying dadblame it wait 'till I get to my stick you lil' son-of-a-gun you. I'll knock your dadblame haid off!
Dorey and I were almost hysterical it was so funny, but then here come the rooster hauling butt back 'round the far corner of the house and right behind him was Mama Ponder swingin' what used to be part of a wooden crutch with all her might. I mean she thoroughly intended to kill our best damn rooster right then and there, if she could ketch it. Fortunately for that ole mean rooster he out run her.
Well, them two women, mostly Mama Ponder, spoiled Drumstick rotten. The other chickens wouldn't let Drumstick associate with the rest of the flock. Every time Drumstick tried to, they would jump on it and peck the livin' dickens out of it and chase it off. Eventually, they would have killed ole Drumstick except it finally stopped tryin' to associate with 'em. Instead of roostin' in the henhouse with the flock, Mama made it a bed out of old newspaper in a cardboard box and set it up on the freezer in our carport near where our dog Sissy slept. Nothin' would come in there and bother it. Drumstick would walk right up to Sissy when she was layin' nearby and start scratchin' and ah peckin' in her hair lookin' for somethin' to eat. Sissy, would just lay there and look at that idiot with a confused expression on her face. She never offered to hurt Drumstick.
You know that dumb chicken would not hop in that box, if it didn't have fresh newspaper in there. It would sit there on top of the freezer and cluck and carry on until Mama would come out and put fresh paper in there for its bed. Then ever thang was fine and it would hop right in that box and settle down for the night.
When Mama went outside Drumstick would follow her ever step she made. When Mama was in the kitchen, it would hop up on the pile of firewood outside and then hop in the window ledge over the kitchen sink and watch her and sing to her. At least I think that's what that noise was supposed to be. After we got the cattle, Drumstick hung around with the cattle. It followed those cattle most of the day and was always under foot...errr...hoof. One day, I saw ole Drumstick just a floppin' around in the pasture. It would walk in circles then fall down and flop its wings and then run wobbly-like and fall down and flop some more. I figured it had been under the cattle's hoofs once too often and had been kicked or stepped on. I finally killed ole Drumstick and put it out of is misery and then buried it on the spot. I told Mama that I had found it dead...most likely stepped on by a cow.
We did have good chicken and more eggs than we could use for a while there. But Mama had forgotten that free-range chickens range anywhere they please and they poop wherever they go. Finally, she had had it with the chicken poop everywhere. And decided to get rid of all them dadblame chickens right then! So we commenced to kill, pluck, gut, clean, cut up and put chicken in the freezer. We had so many chickens I just almost wore out my hatchet arm. I killed them, dunked them in the boilin' water, and plucked them. Mama done the rest, 'cept I helped her cut 'em up, bag 'em and carry 'em to the freezer. Naturally, Dorey never participated in this gory business.
We killed them all, 'cept for the banty hen and her chicks and that ole Dominecker rooster. Mama gave the rooster to a neighbor, Tommy Gann. Two days later, one of Tommy's banty roosters got loose and killed that big pretty Dominecker rooster. We couldn't catch the banty hen and her brood and didn't really think they would be good eatin' anyway so we just left them on their own.
Somebody gave Mama the banty hen and her newly hatched chicks. The very first day we let them out of the coop, she took those itty-bitty chicks on a cross country forced march. Up the hill to the top of the pasture she went and those tiny things just a flutterin' along behind her tryin' to keep up. Then she would march back and forth across the pasture gett'in lower and lower on the hillside each lap they made. Until she was back to the coop and then they got a drink and some chow and a nap. The afternoon was a repeat of the morning. This went on every day until they were old enough to find their own food and water. But they still pretty much stayed in one flock and with that ole' hen.
Sissy never offered to bother any of our chickens, not even Drumstick when it walked all over her scratching and pecking in her hair. 'Cept for the banty hen and her brood and not them until after they were the only chickens left on our property. The banty hen and her brood never roosted a single night in the henhouse, not even after her chicks were too big to roost in the lil' coop. They roosted in the trees on the hill behind the house come dusk each night and flew back to the ground at the crack of dawn. Not sure why they didn't roost in the henhouse, but it may have been the rest of the flock considered them to be outsidrs, like Drumstick.
And I guess them roosting in the 'wild' so to speak was what made them different in Sissy's thinkin.' I reckon Sissy figured if they sleep in them trees, they're fair game. We started noticing the banty hen's brood shrinking in number. About one a day would disappear. One day, the neighbor's son was workin' in their yard and told us that he had found several chickens partially buried down by the creek. We weren't sure what had killed them, but the buryin' part sounded like a dog for sure. The ole banty hen was the last to go. Well, one morning while it was still dark, we heard that ole hen sqawkin' and we ran outside with flashlights. I was in the lead and there in my beam was Sissy with a mouthful of feathers standin' astraddle of one each dead ole banty hen. Dorey said that was merely circumstantial evidence and it wouldn't hold up in court and besides Sissy had probably just run the varmint off what killed the ole hen and was standin' over her to protect her from further harm. I said bullshit.
Don
"Brer Bear" Valentine
Remember New York!
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