The Three Fates
Time for a chicken update, and here’s my whole sad little flock as Winter approaches. Maggie’s still with us — she’s just off-camera in the cage to the left. They spend a lot of time flocking around her, keeping her company, but they would do her injury if I let them at her.
That’s Mapp on the right. She looks like shit because she’s molting, but she is also starting to show her age a bit. She’s four this year. Six is probably the most we can expect. This is hard, because — don’t tell the other chickens — Mapp is my favorite.
That’s Vita in the middle, the biggest and prettiest of the chickens. Big, beautiful, shy, stupid Vita. Stupid, stupid Vita.
Violence on the left, the off-white one. She’s kind of head chicken at the moment, and a lousy job she does of it, too. She’s mean and arbitrary and apt to say “fuck it” in the middle of the day and go back to bed. At roosting time, she becomes a peckin’ machine. The other chickens fear her, but do not follow her.
Everyone who knows my flock agrees, the heart went out of them when Lucia died. She was the Mary Poppins of chickens, practically perfect in every way. She kept ’em in line. Without her, they don’t explore. They don’t get up to trouble. They don’t get into the vegetable patch and eat peas or show up in my kitchen and poop on the floor.
We had our first fire of the season last night. Cold and wet and bad time for chickens coming. Spare a thought for my sad, tiny flock.
October 7, 2014 — 9:32 pm
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