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Literature and Chickens

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Today is the birthday of the writer E.B. White in 1899. The E. stood for Elwyn, which White said he “never liked”.

“My mother just hung it on me because she’d run out of names. I was her sixth child.”

I guess it didn’t take long to get to “Elwyn” during the last summer of the 19th century. Just one of the ways in which things have changed.

White wrote for the New Yorker Magazine and celebrated the city in prose, but he and his wife Katherine were also drawn to the countryside. They bought a farmhouse in rural Maine and lived there in the company of animals from 1938 on.

Observing nature gave him inspiration for plenty of wonderful work, including “Charlotte’s Web”, a classic tale about a philosophical spider and a fabulous pig.

Here’s an E.B. White quote:

“I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.”

There’s a lot of the human/animal struggle in White’s writing, including this letter to a friend.

My poultry operations have expanded considerably since you were here: I have a large laying house with a flock of would-be layers that turned and bit me in mid season. It was the most stinging defeat of my life, for I put a good deal of my energy into the project, raised the birds by hand from infancy, ranged them on green range, groomed them for the battle, designed and built the house, and saw them go into production in early September looking like a million dollars and shelling out in great shape. All of a sudden some little thing went wrong and they began to come apart, the way pullets do when the vitamins don’t add up right, or when a couple of them get going to the bathroom too often. From forty dozen eggs a week I slid off to about fourteen dozen, and cannibalism began taking its ugly toll. Ah welladay! A man learns a lot in a year, if he hangs around animals.

I have to wonder how E.B. White would feel about all the action these days around the issue of keeping chickens in the city.

He wrote about everything, from poultry to polling. Nothing is off-limits to a talented observer.

“The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs, and although you can take a nation’s blood pressure, you can’t be sure that if you came back in twenty minutes you’d get the same reading. This is a damn fine thing.”

Chickens and people – he seemed to have an affinity for unmanageable things.

Though he died in 1985, E.B. White remains an inspiration to writers everywhere, thanks to his books, poems and a slim but powerful guide, “The Elements of Style.”

If E.B. White gives you a hankering to write, I’d be happy to put you on the list for a guest blog appearance! I’m hoping to take next week off, so drop a line to connelly.dale@gmail.com.

What are some of your feelings about chickens?

111 thoughts on “Literature and Chickens”

  1. Recent phone call from my son, “Mom, did you go to the Afton 4th of July parade?”

    Me, “No.”

    “But mom, you know how much you like petting the chickens. Now you’ll have to wait a whole year.”

    Unlike Elwyn I have no personal chickens, but I do enjoy the absurd opportunity provided most years by the Afton 4H. These young agriculturists walk alongside their float and offer bystanders the chance to feel the smooth feathers of the colorful poultry.

    Good news, the Washington County Fair also provides chicken petting opportunities for interested baboons and other visitors to Lake Elmo in August.

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    1. The notion of marching with a chicken seems oddly appealing. Do the 4H-ers do any formation drills with their chickens, or just walk along next to the float and offer the chickens out for for attendees to pet?

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      1. They just walk along-it’s a very low key activity in a pretty low key parade. It’s also an up and back parade so they march to one end of town and turn around and march back alongside the folks still marching ahead. If you position yourself properly there are 2 petting opportuities.

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      4. Why? Actually, I prefer my pigeons caffeinated and wide awake. I’m just sharing knowledge, Cliffywise. Dog trainers put dozy pigeons in the grass so they can work with dogs that will flush or point them.

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  2. i could say the same thing about sports. the frustration i feel by involving other people in the sports experience is directly measurable by the amount of time i have been away from the experience. the coaches who mess with your kids are human but how do they pick such exceptionally poor judges of human spirit to head a group of young people. you need to look at the spirit as well as the ability of these people and not crush the 9 10 11 year olds as they are coming into their brush with how the world works through the eyes of an adult. these coaches have no more sense of fairness consideration or compassion than the clip board they carry. they are here to fulfill some lacking in their personal developmental process and the kids can figure out that the team is the recipient of the angst, longing, living vicariously through the lives f others and they are the vehicle for the therapy.basketball parents baseball parents football parents, soccer parents … swimming wasn’t so bad, not so much discussion the numbers speak for themselves.my son who spent his life in sports had coaches on the senior year of high school bench him for the entire year. he aborted the notion of playing sports in college because of this. i don’t know if its a blessing r a curse but it gets my blood boiling to think about it.
    do you think elwyn was disgusted with literature because of the meaningless tripe that was being printed or becase they wouldn’t publish his meaningless tripe?
    dale i like the way you enter the job market. i really do. spend a year searching ad when you find it they have to understand that you will be on vacation 3 of your first 6 weeks. i think you found a spot that will work well for your outside the workplace needs.

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    1. You would hope that in the schools the coaches are coaching because they love to develop and encourage young athletes; not always the case, I know. Unfortunately on the community level, I don’t think there is much picking of the finest coaching candidates from a vast field of eager volunteers. The parents who are really in to ensuring that their child shines on a winning team are there front and center to get the job and get the job done. The rest are frequently pushed or pulled, kicking and whining, into the position by the threat that if there are not enough coaches there may not be a team for their child to play on. I don’t know how much coaching the coaches get, but more would be better.

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      1. Have to weigh in this one in praise of my son’s most excellent community soccer coach. He really loves the game and has played all his life. He makes the kids work hard, but somehow also instills the love of the game in them. Don’t know if that is just the luck of the draw or what, but the team seems to work well together.

        We are not a very sports-minded family, so I feel very lucky that my son has been able to participate in the neighborhood league and enjoy the game without too much of the “soccer parent” pressure to deal with. The league we are involved with has the parents sign a pledge at sign-up time to the effect that they will be respectful and supportive of all participants, ref, and coaches. It’s a good thing.

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  3. The notion of having a chicken in the city does provide some appeal, but I’d rather not deal with the poo (I get enough of that already with a dog and two cats), and I’m not convinced that I would wind up with a nice quiet chicken. And I’d probably wind up like E.B. White with chicken cannibalism in my own back yard (so, Mildred, what did Ethel taste like?…um, frog legs…).

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    1. This is my problem with it all. I don’t have the nerves for livestock in general (but GOATS would be different-that is my story, I am sticking to it). I once entertained the idea of turning the garage into a henhouse (because what has the car done for me lately in excahnge for all the feed and care cost?) I did a fair amount of research and it sounded not too bad-until I got to the diseases section, and then there was the racoon that came to my back door.

      I’ve made friends with Peter (the Eggman-coo-coo-ka-choo) at the Farmer’s Market. His girls do excellent work. In the summer when he has surplus tomatoes, the chickens eat them and the yolks of the eggs are bright orange!-and delicious).

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  4. The issue of keeping chickens in the city has a special resonance in my family. Those who have read my book about my parents might recall my mother’s uncle Mert, the pride of the family who became wealthy through publications about chickens. Mert started by having chickens in a coop out by his garage, which wasn’t SO unusual in his little town in the 1930s. Then he moved the chickens into his home, and that was odd. Mert finally dropped any pretense at controlling the chickens. He just gave them the run of the upstairs while he moved to the basement, and by this time you wouldn’t say that Mert had chickens in his home so much as Mert was living in the lower story of a chicken coop. He continued to get crazier until they came for him with a straight jacket and installed him in an institution.

    I suppose I could experiment with a chicken or two in my yard (it would be fun to outrage the local Lawn Nazi), but I’m not sure anyone in my family should start down that path!

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    1. it sounds like a fun summer project steve. let me know if i can help build the first coop in the back yard. drve the nazi wild

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons:

    Chickens are a topic that actually intrigue me. If you really have them, though, it’s like having children–great results in the long term, some really nice products result in the short term (eggs, fertilizer)–because it is lots and lots and lots of work. And chickens peck your hand very hard when you go after their eggs.

    So I’m against them in the city for me just because I don’t want to work that hard at one more thing.

    A High School friend did a fabulous chicken imitation back in the day. This imitation kept us all vastly entertained during long bus rides to contests and other destinations–another short term, but little known advantage of chickens.

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    1. Jacque, I do a “sick chicken” imitation that usually gets a few laughs. If I make it to BBC Sunday, remind me…

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  6. My paternal grandmother kept bantam chickens, and I was always terrified of them, especially when it was time to gather eggs. i never could muster the courage to stick my hand under a sitting hen. My grandmother always had little round band aids on her forearms covering pecks from the chickens. My maternal uncle raised huge leghorns. I watched them at butchering time once and was horrified to see them run around without their heads. My aunt made wonderful braised chicken that is a family favorite, and I will add the recipe here later today..

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  7. Dale, I will have a blog to you by the end of the day tomorrow, a good fun participatory topic.

    In my childhood every spring we would get 100 “mixed heavies,” meaning almost all males, as best sexers–sexers, not sexists–could judge. They would come in flat boxes with holes in them first at the train depot, the best way, and then in later years by truck to the feed store in Segog, fun too.
    We would keep them in a brooder my father built, heated by two electric bulbs, out in the shop. This was the tricky stage, when they could die of heat or cold, so had to watch the bulbs, and when they could start picking each other to death.
    After a couple weeks, we would move them out to a shed, where they was also an electric bulb or two at night, but they were not let out into the fenced area until a couple more weeks, and then out on the loose a couple weeks after that.
    Right about this time of the year, right after the 4th, we started the butchery, I mean butchering, for much of my childhood a job for only Mother and me. Each evening I would pick out about 5-8 of the biggest, the number getting higher as we progressed because more were ready, and put these under mental bushel baskets wired down to the top of the fenced-in yard by the chicken house to clean themselves out over night. You know what chickens are best at, don’t you? If not, be careful where you step in a barnyard with loose chickens.
    The next morning I would chop off the heads of the selected chickens and watch them flop to their death. Then my mother would bring the scalding water into which she would dip each chicken, getting them good and soaked. Ugh. I can smell it now. Then we would pick off the feathers, being sure to get the pin feathers, all made easier by the scalding, but how the fathers would stick to your hands, clothes, face, hair, etc.
    Then it would be about 8 a.m., and I would go off to haying, which was always starting right about the same time, and Mother would go cut up the chickens for the freezer, except the first night, and a night every so often, we would have fresh fried chicken for supper, and that made it really worthwhile. Every day as part of lunch we had fried giblets.
    This is all one of my fondest memories, for the family effort involved, the responsibilities I was given at quite a young age to feed, tend, and help butcher them, and for the food.

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    1. I remember the family butchering chickens. I wasn’t old enough to help, I was just there.
      It does make quite an impression on an youngster doesn’t it?
      I remember the heads being chopped off and the smell of the scalding, as you say, is very distinct.

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    3. What is so interesting is that the actual events of your chicken picken’ days are ambiguous or complex. I was prepared to hear an ending about how much your hated these days. Instead, you went entirely the other way. That’s life. Love and a sense of shared effort can make us love what we might otherwise hate.

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      1. A talking point I have worn out with my friends is that we are in this era too far removed from the barn, coop, and slaughterhouse to really respect life and appreciate food.

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  8. White’s step-son write a wonderful adoring book about him. Everybody loved him, even nasty old Thurber.

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    1. yes, i know what chickens do best, Clyde – and that’s why i don’t have them anymore. (although i do miss them a bit) – they are disrespectful of others. if i let them free-range, they’d always head straight for the goat barn and do what they do best in the fresh hay, the water, in the pens, etc. uff da.

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  9. I like them! As a matter of fact, I’ve been chicken sitting this weekend, and have just returned from letting the “girls” out. My neighbors down the street, Helen and Sarah, have 6 chickens in a fancy coop in their back yard, and I’m their go-to chicken tender whenever they go anywhere. Chicken sitting involves opening the coop in the morning to let them out, and tucking them in again at night, and to make sure they have plenty of feed and fresh water. I also bring the “girls” special treats. As I have a small forest of arugula in my own garden, they’ve been getting some of that mixed in with other greens. They enjoy a variety of greens, but they weren’t crazy about the fresh carrot tops I brought them after my early morning visit to the Farmers’ Market on Saturday.

    Helen and Sarah allow the “girls” to roam freely in their large garden when they’re at home, so the hens are always looking for me to them out of their pen. They apparently know their home turf and tend to stay there, but I only let them out if I’m going to stay around to keep an eye on them. Once when I was chicken sitting, one of the hens meandered out of the yard and into a wooded area overgrown with tall weeds adjacent to Helen’s property. Lots of tasty bugs in the soil there, I suppose, so when I went to chase her back home, she wasn’t cooperating. Enlisting the help of my husband, we finally managed to corner her and husband scoop her up into his arms. Walking back to Helen’s yard, with the hen tucked under his arm, husband was passed by a police car. The cop stopped, backed up, rolled down his window and asked “Where are you going with that chicken?” Guess he wanted to make sure he didn’t have a chicken thief on the loose in this St. Paul neighborhood on his watch!

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    1. Hello PJ–
      We always bring ‘chicken bags’ home from restaurants. Go outside and yell “CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS” and they all come running. It’s pretty fun. But yes, they are picky eaters sometimes. They don’t like kale either.
      Our biggest problem lately is the chickens root / scratch / dig in the landscaping mulch and mess that up.

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  10. Morning–

    I’ve talked about my chickens. They are enjoyable and very definitely have their different personalities that my children have always enjoyed. There’s only a few that are actually mean and the current resident meany is a golden colored one similar to Dale’s picture. She would peck at me when I reached for her eggs and the other day I finally put six eggs under her and said ‘OK, make yourself useful’ and that has calmed her considerably.
    Now she lets me check under her to be sure there are still six eggs and she doesn’t peck at me.
    We are down to three remaining Guineas (A speckled gray fowl type animal that’s noisy and kinda fun.)
    http://www.hoglezoo.org/meet_our_animals/animal_finder/Helmeted_Guinea_Fowl
    So I have ordered more baby guinea that will arrive the end of July and I also loaded up my incubator figuring if I’m gonna raise guinea keets I may as well raise chicks too. They should all arrive about the same day.

    Clyde talked about picking baby chicks up at the train depot or feed store. They come to the post office now and I go in there and tell them “I’m here to pick up chicks”.

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    1. Ben, do you keep the guineas for the same reason you’d keep chickens, for the eggs and eating? Or are they just pets? Do you live on a farm?

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      1. The guineas are just for fun… as are the chickens I suppose if I was truthful about the whole thing. I had my Mom show me how to butcher a few chickens once but I like collecting eggs better.
        I heard once that you should throw a guinea egg over your house on Easter Morning for good luck– if it doesn’t break. And I did do that once or twice but it’s harder to find the guinea eggs; they don’t lay them in the coop like the chickens.
        We have some ducks too. Everything is free ranging all over the yard. Ducks go off in the pasture. Guineas will go off in the fields but the chickens pretty much stay within a 100 yard radius of their coop.

        Yes, we live out in the country on a working farm. I sold my milk cows about 7 years ago but still run the crop land.

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    2. Guinea hens, yet another sign that God has a sense of humor. Always have to take a good look at them at the Fair, just for the laugh.

      I also may yet give in to my long-running to desire to get the t-shirt next time I am in Decorah that says “Another Quality Chick from the Decorah Hatchery”. It sits right there on Water Street (which is actually the main street in downtown).

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  11. Morning all. As a city girl, born and bred, I have absolutely no experience with chickens, unless you count the chickens at “Wild Rumpus” who are very nice and like to be petted. The teenager and I do like to walk through the poultry house at the state fair and look at all the fancy hens and roosters, but there isn’t much petting there usually.

    I don’t even know much about chickens, except what I’ve gotten from reading Michael Pollan – he being the reason I am now forking over bigger bucks for free range chicken eggs!

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  12. I’ll get a story to you, too, Dale.

    Are you guys familiar with the Weissman Museum overlooking the Mississippi on the U of M campus? That’s the metal building that looks like it was built by a pair of kids just learning to use metal shears. The Weissman’s permanent collection includes an over-sized oil painting of a sort of chicken coop that runs floor-to-ceiling and from the foreground to infinity. It is the most haunting, depressing and scary thing I have ever seen. At odd moments that image will float into my consciousness and scare the bejeebers out of me once again.

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    2. Steve, I also had a strong reaction to that painting of chicken cages at the Wiessman. Although the painting exaggerates the way chickens are kept in cages under current production practices, it is basicly correct. I have seen chicken houses and the chickens are confined very much in the way that is shown in that picture. I think there are some farmers who try to take good care of their chickens using this caging system, but it is hard to image that even with the best of management that this could be a humane way to treat chickens.

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      1. Jim, I’m glad someone else has seen it. I see that picture less as a document about how we currently raise chickens than as a metaphor for life (and death). Your view of it wouldn’t terrify me like my view does!

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      2. I’m not the best at metaphors, but I think I do understand, more or less, how you see the picture as a metaphor, Steve Perhaps the metaphor involved and the reality of the way chickens are treated in large confinment operations are interrelated. I think there is a connection between mistreating animals and mistreating people and we seem to be able to more or less ignore what is going on regarding the treatment of both people and animals.

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      3. i have heard that this is exactly how chickens have been treated. in these cages, turn the lights on and off in black barns 5 or 6 times a day to increase production because they think each time the lights go on and off the cycle has started over again. reminds me of life in modern times too. go faster burn out quickly, if you cant do that person will and you will become chicken noodle soup when your productive days are past. te artist really captures the feeling doesn’t he.
        frank gehry is my favorite architect. check this out:http://www.google.com/search?q=gehry&hl=en&rlz=1C1GPCK_enUS411US411&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=T0IbTrWhHcSNsALm-9jCBw&ved=0CEIQsAQ&biw=1040&bih=668

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    3. I don’t know how many young people I’ve spoken to who’ve said that it was crossing the Washington Ave bridge with the sun reflecting off the Weissman that made them choose the Cities to live. It certainly was so for me.

      Having said that, I’m embarrassed to admit that I spent 4 years at the Mpls U of MN campus and never once set foot inside.

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      2. Yes, our next museum outing. I’ve only been there once, and maybe the chicken cage painting wasn’t there then.

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      3. Love the Weissman but I haven’t been there in a long time. I was in University Hospital for a week while it was being built and wondered what it the world they were putting up. I’d be up for a field trip.

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      5. One of my class assignments in grad school was to visit at least three art museums in town and review the experience – not in terms of the art that is there, but in terms of the experience of the building and how it flows. From that perspective, the Weissman disappoints a bit inside – the outside is so cool, but the inside is just big, white boxes without a clean traffic flow (and, as it happened, the exhibit that was up when I visited then forced you to double-back on yourself to get to other galleries). MIA was the best, in my opinion, in terms of “user-friendliness” but it lacks the outer-funkiness of the Wiessman. (Related to building exteriors – if you haven’t been by the U of M Fairview Riverside campus lately, drive down Riverside Ave and check out the new building – the exterior is super cool and changes colors in the sunshine.)

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      7. Bad news, Anna. I went inside the new Amplatz Children’s Hospital at the U. The outside is cool but the inside has all the personality and healing vibe of an airport.

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      9. Oh bummer, I had hoped the new hospital building interior would live up to the fabulousness that is the exterior. Sigh. Thanks for the warning, Beth-Ann.

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      10. i suspect its a left brain right brain thing eh lefty? lots of creative jusice in the lefty but the rational organized asect takes a back seat. architect needs to recognize liitations and find a good partner to keep him on the straight and narrow and augment the creative side with a flow, double checking with the whimsey to keep the vibe intact. its an art few can have and the egos of the architect often get in the way. remember the story f the person calling frank lloyd wright to tell him the roof on their new house was leaking and his response was to move your chair.

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  13. Good morning to all:

    I’m fascinated by chickens, especially the many interesting kinds you can find on displayed at fairs. There are many unusual variations in appearance and, I suspect, there is a lot variation in behavior that goes along with these variations in appearance. I’ve learned a little about chicken breeds from other seed savers who have an interest in saving rare poultry that is related to their interest in saving rare plants. Although you can still see some interesting chicken breeds at fairs, many old breeds have been lost or are in danger of being lost and some are not being correctly maintained.

    I am tempted to get involved in saving rare breeds of chickens by raising some of them myself, but I don’t think that this is something I should do. I have enough trouble keeping up with my seed saving activities. Also, I know how keeping animals can be a drain on my time and resources. I always liked having a pet cat or dog and don’t have any pets presently. Some time soon I expect we will get another dog. I am willing to return to the duties of caring for a dog and I think adding the work of caring for chickens to the work of caring for a dog would not be good for me.

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  14. At the time I left TX, the city of Austin was having a debate about banning roosters. I did not even know that Austinites (Austinians?) were allowed to have chickens in the city.

    http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/chickenlaws.html

    We currently get eggs (chicken and duck) delivered at work from a laboratory technician whose parents have a farm about an hour east of here. One day we’ll go visit — but plants are all I have time for right now!

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  15. I am not particularly fond of chickens, but when my mom was very young, she had a pet chicken. She followed this chicken around the yard, carried it around outside and even took her afternoon naps with her pet chicken. Someone stole the family’s chickens and they got some of them back, but not her special pet, which was some fancy Asian breed of chicken. This made my mom very sad. Henry Wallace bought her another chicken of the same breed to take her pet’s place, but it wasn’t the same.

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      4. I’ve had two occasions to study the St. Paul police in action. And, gee, what can I say about the impression they made? If I ever wanted to commit a really big crime, I hope I could stay at home to do it because I’d be perfectly safe with the St. Paul police on the case.

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  16. Completely OT– but someone here probably know something about this.

    Was looking at old pictures with my Mom and sisters over the weekend. My Mom’s Dad had 9 sisters and one brother. There was a picture of the 8 marrried sisters literally ‘looking down’ on the one un-married sister. Mom said she was told this was a fairly common pose back then. The unmarried daughter sitting, facing the other married sisters.
    We just had a paper copy of the photo but it was a really fascinating picture.
    Anyone familiar with that type of thing?

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    1. This does sound familiar-is this picture pre-1910? Photographers did all sorts of odd stuff. We have one of my grandmother’s sister that is mostly just the back of her hair (I grant you, it is rather a nice head of hair, but very odd nonetheless).

      Ben, are you familiar with Wisconsin Death Trip?

      I got a copy when it first came out for costume research-it has some rather odd stuff in it as well.

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      3. Hi MIG,
        I was not familiar with that book. Very interesting.
        By the by, I greatly enjoyed the Old Rail Fence Corners stories… simply amazing to think about being in that time.
        (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22179/22179-h/22179-h.htm
        for anyone that missed it the first time around).
        I’m guessing the picture was somewhere in the 1910 – 1920 based on the ages of the ladies. We have the family tree of that side pretty well mapped out. And with all those girls we get lots of new names involved. I’m probably related to some of you!

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      5. Ben – If you have any Bliss, Lokken, Lower or Klove names mixed in there, we are not even distantly related… 🙂 The Lokkens and Lowers (the latter should be an O with a line through it, if properly spelled like a Norwegian) are the side of the family from southern MN and Wisconsin, so the most likely candidates I’d guess.

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      6. Well, Anna, no; none of those names. Great Grandma and Grandpa came over from Switzerland and settled in the Mormon Coulee region around Lacrosse. Great Grandma was a Keinholz then the girls became Steigers, Hintgen, Kunerth, Pike, Schickman, Wilson, Helvig and Pawlak. Eggler is the patriarch.

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  17. Party! Party! Here’s an open invitation for any baboon to join MN in Sudbury and her guy and me for a cabin visit July 29-August 1. She’d like to meet fellow travelers on this Trail. Anyone else free to come up?

    I plan to cook chicken.

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    2. It’s a possibility, Steve, will let you know. We’d probably sleep at the friends’ place in Herbster.

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    3. you gonna cut his head off and watch him run around before you throw him in the boiling pot? weekend might work if yellowstone difficulties persist

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  18. I’ll tell Husbands chicken story since I have none of my own. They did chickens on the “hippie farm” outside Winona – started with a dozen, so got to know their personalities, and the pecking order was pretty clear. So when they decided to butcher a chicken, they’d take “Top Rooster” just so they could watch the antics. It was fun to see how long it would take #2 to realize, Hey, that other guy isn’t around. They could mostly see this when #2 would try to jump a hen, and realize he wasn’t being challenged.

    I keep thinking I’d love to have chickens in the back 40, but Husband says we have too many racoons, etc. and would have to build a virtual fortress. Plus there’s the traveling glitch… If PJ lived closer… Maybe those of us interested should put our heads together… Yet another Baboon enterprise?

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  19. We currently live in a condo in downtown/lowertown Saint Paul. One day last summer a hand-printed note appeared on the outer door of the building that said, “If anyone in this building is missing their chicken, it is loose in the courtyard.” Apparently someone in the adjoining apartment building had been raising chickens on their balcony and one had flown the coop and was living the high life on the lam. Not really what you expect in that urban an environnment.

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  21. Now that I am further into my day I recall that one of my dad’s first jobs was working for some sort of ag lab that had offices at Lake and Lyndale in Minneapolis back in the 40s (no, he wasn’t sure why it was there, either – even in the 40s that was quite urban…). His job was cleaning the chicken’s cages at the lab. He didn’t stay at the job long – and learned from that job to appreciate any work that didn’t include cleaning up after (mean) chickens.

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  22. Courtesy of the Smothers Brothers
    My old man’s a Cotton Pickin’ Finger Lickin’ Chicken Plucker,
    What do you think about that?
    He wears a Cotton Pickin’ Finger Lickin’ Chicken Plucker’s collar,
    He wears a Cotton Pickin’ Finger Lickin’ Chicken Plucker’s hat.
    He wears a Cotton Pickin’ Finger Lickin’ Chicken Plucker’s raincoat,
    He wears a Cotton Pickin’ Finger Lickin’ Chicken Plucker’s shoes.
    And every Saturday evening,
    He reads the Cotton Pickin’ Finger Lickin’ Chicken Plucker News.
    And someday, if I can,
    I’m gonna be a Cotton Pickin’ Finger Lickin’ Chicken Plucker just like my old man.

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  24. You know, I was hoping all day for some chicken jokes. We didn’t have many of them (if any) the other day and I was thinking it would be nice………… anyone, anyone?

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    1. Man takes his brother to see a psychiatrist.
      Psychiatrist asks, “What seems to be the problem?”
      Man says, “My brother thinks he is a chicken!”
      Psychiatrist says, “I see. So how long has this been going on?”
      Man says, “About a year.”
      Psychiatrist asks, “Why didn’t you seek help sooner?”
      ‘Well, we needed the eggs.’

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    2. Q. What Is The Difference Between `Kinky’ And `Erotic?’
      A. With `Kinky’ You Use The Whole Chicken.

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  26. ok, Shandy in hand i will tell this. we had chickens for two years. i loved them (but as i said earlier- they were disrespectful of the rights of others).
    but worse, they are inscrutable and they just up and get sick for no good reason.
    MIG – i agree – the diseases are just too many. so one day i came upon a hen in distress. not breathing well, gasping, and i had no clue what was going on. Steve ran into the house to look on the internet about breathing problems, and, when no one was looking, i gave the chicken mouth to beak resuscitation. i bet she wondered what the heck i was doing. didn’t work. she continued to decline and we decided to put her out of her misery and chopped of her head and burned her in the fire pit, drinking many beer so as to sterilize my mouth. 🙂
    soon, we got Majority and needed that house for him and Nibs. so the chickens left, never to return. we traded them for hay.

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    1. I’m not sure if I should apologize in advance or not – didn’t view the whole thing till after I posted it!

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  28. My two very pragmatic German parents would put in some effort to have a clucky hen and a brood of chicks in our farmyard, just for the pleasure of it.

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  29. My parents had chickens for a while when I was a baby, but I don’t remember them. My sister does.

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