A number of my friends and acquaintances raise chickens.
Some live on farms, where chickens have historically belonged. Others are urban rebels. They hide coups behind privacy fences and use omelets as hush money to stifle the neighbors.
I am not a chicken person, at least not in the raise/care for/feed/gather/protect kind of way. I tried my hand at chicken-sittin’ for a week, and that went… well. You can read The Chicken Gazette to see how that went. I’ll stick with cats.
Two kinds of Chicken People seem to orbit my world:
1. The “I cannot possibly eat all these eggs” variety. They can be found buried under eggy avalanches every other week. These people have historically high cholesterol levels, chase their mail carriers with cartons of overstock, and Google if fresh eggs are freezeable. (You can freeze them, but this requires so many steps that if I were a Chicken Person, I’d rather chase down my mailman barefoot in the snow than spend that much more time in my kitchen.)
2. The “What could’ve possibly eaten all my chickens?” variety. Feather-littered crime scene detectives, they are. These souls grump about foxes, hawks, and raccoons, glare over the rims of their glasses at the sketchy neighbor kid, and keep a running spreadsheet on the price of electric fencing.
Yesterday, Little Miss likened our creative efforts to the conundrums Chicken People face. “We’ve either laid out so many ideas we can’t possibly write them all, or something with fangs has crept in here and gobbled up all your energy.”
I can’t argue with this.
We’ve been in a conundrum for the last couple of years. Sharp-toothed grief, loss, and circumstances beyond our wildest imaginations have tossed interesting and untoward challenges into the writing office.
“How do we fix this?” I’ve asked this out loud more than once in the last few months. I have one brain cell left, and it’s at max capacity.
Beyond capacity, actually.
Little Miss thinks and twirls her gum before flopping backward onto the desk—her favorite place of late—atop a stack of half-written manuscripts, a sideways pile of sticky notes documenting gloriously unrealized ideas, and three calendars of deadlines that we’ve declared rotten eggs.
All this is piled on top of theater stuff, estate stuff, and an abandoned art project “for mental health’s sake” that frustrated the fire out of me. Another rotten egg.
We cleaned the desk off today and decluttered the room. It was like an archaeological dig in which the cats were the only ones having fun because a messy room is a fun room—and Amara always finds one or two of her missing spring toys when Mother declutters.
“I’m surprised you didn’t find a chicken in here.” Little Miss Muse uses her hip to scoot a box of book-signing supplies into the corner. Dust bunnies fly in all directions. “A live chicken.” She sneezes.
“When’s the last time we actually worked in this room?” I’ve been dragging the laptop to other spaces to write the blog most weeks. And fiction? Ha!
Little Miss picks up a stack of expired coupons. Two are for cartons of eggs. “A while,” she sighs.
I sigh.
“How do we fix this?” I ask again.
Little Miss pulls out her amethyst bedazzled Zippo lighter from the waistband of her tattered tutu and gives it a flick or two.
I moan. “I’m not ready for that extreme today. If you’d have offered two weeks ago, though…”
She puts the Zippo away and flits to the top of the plush pink cat tower. “I’m laying ideas right and left. Some are trying to hatch. But you’ve buried them under...” she waves her chonky arm over the room, “this crime scene of an office.”
I sit down at the desk and realize the Jiggle Dragons are dusty.
Little Miss flies down to the arm of my chair. She has a blob of grape gum stuck in her curls. “Some Chicken People really love their chickens. Like really, really love them. Emotional support animal level of love.”
“What are you getting at?”
“You need to become the third kind of Chicken Person.”
“Third kind?”
“Yeah. They’re certifiable, but you could learn a thing or two.” She thinks for a minute, then gets that impish grin. “They enjoy early morning chats with their Rhode Island Reds. Lengthy walks with their Leghorns at lunchtime. Wooing eye contact with their Wyandottes at sunset.”
“Wooing eye contact?” I nearly do a spit-take, and I’m not drinking anything.
“Yeah, Beth. Put a fence around the barnyard. Coyote-proof the nesting boxes.” She picks at her nails. “Then maybe woo the Muse while you’re at it. I’m out of bottle rockets.”
I stare at the stack of expired coupons. Two are for eggs…
She flicks lavender glitter onto the desk I just dusted, pulling me from the muck. “Build the fence. Name the hens. Woo the work.”
She’s right. Again. (This will cost me a warehouse full of fireworks, but she’s right.)
All the Chicken People I know tend to the flocks, the messes, and the nests every day. No matter whether there’s an abundance of eggs, an untoward predator on the loose, or an emotional void only a feathered gal can fill—they show up.
I won’t likely be chasing my mailman down the road with extra ideas anytime soon. But I may need to take a page from the third kind of Chicken Person: Be certifiable enough to show up every day with a bit of “woo” for the Muse.
