Love, Loss and Cheek Feathers Vol. II: Hard Knock Life

By Ximena the Hen, guest plogger

I BEGAN laying later than most. The other pullets were stepping out of the nest box clucking, tweeting egg pics, preening smugly like they knew they were real hens now, while I just waited. I waited for that feeling you are supposed to get, the deep soul urge that sends you looking for a bit of straw in which to leave your indent. 

Finally, after fall had turned to winter, the urge came. I needed the quiet of the nest box and the undulations of my oviduct as I needed feed and water. There is no greater satisfaction than laying an egg. In my early laying days I would set proudly atop my creation for a good hour after it emerged, enjoying the round certitude under my breast feathers. Sometimes I clucked. Mostly my celebrations were quiet, private.

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Meeting the Night Neighbor

Nightly came the crashing sounds below: toppling stacks of plastic pots, tomato cages that bent and thwanked, a persistent metallic scraping. I initially theorized that the neighbors' funny-eyed cat was hunting rats down there and rested easy on this theory, with its benign implications, until the neighbors and cat moved out. Then I moved on to thinking a homeless drunk was bedding down in the crawlspace. (The challenge was explaining the spectacularly awkward movements that would create such mayhem. Most creatures are sneaky and smooth; they don't trip over stuff with every step.)

I developed half-waking paranoia that the drunk would break into the coop and slaughter the chickens for a meal, and Crim amused himself exploiting my fears. I'd bolt awake in the night and say, What the fuck is that? and he'd say, Shh, go back to sleep. It's just Ernie the Homeless Guy, stumbling home hungry.

A few times I whined enough to make Crim gallantly step out the back door, peak under the house and report that there was nothing there. We let the mystery persist for a good half-year. It became de rigeur to pretend it wasn't really weird to have something crawling around down there.

Was it rats, drunk off whatever was in the corners of the bottles Ernie left behind? A raccoon doing dissertation research on coop security systems? A skunk? In any of the above cases, I didn't want to encounter the perpetrator, which fed the systemic denial. But then fleas fled the cats and invaded our bedclothes (nice work, Advantage), and one fitful night I lay awake with fleas and phantom fleas crawling all over me, hearing Ernie or Skunkie or whoever down there knocking shit over. Classic invasion of grossness. I snapped. I threw on my robe, grabbed a flashlight and said, I'm ready for you, fucker. Be thee skunk or drunk, I shall face thee.

As I stumbled down the back steps, I thought about Writing. I think about it a lot, Writing being the altar at which I have sacrificed whatever money, power, respect I might otherwise have coming as a thirty year-old college graduate. When you want to write things, stories tend to come. And maybe also courage. Because you want a good story, and a good story requires going out there and meeting the beast.

(When I was ten, a skunk got into my bedroom at night--don't ask--and I spun it into my first publication feat: a proud check for $10 from Stone Soup, the magazine for children that no child has ever read. The check was tacked to my wall for years, beginning what I can only hope will be a lifetime of Writing paychecks so tiny that they are more trophy than income.)

I soothed the hens, who were making quiet sounds of anxiety. That's the best they can do, defenseless in the night: commiserate with each other like, You hear that?--sounds like something--well I'm okay--you okay?--everybody here?--united front, girls, stick together--we're okay--not to worry. Then I looked under the house.

Nothing there, of course. Silence where the crashing sounds had been. But I wasn't going back inside. I crouched among the cobwebs and the rat droppings and waited.

Finally, near the opposite wall, I saw something. A swish-swish. A long, white tail. No other movement. No other sound. It became The Sound of Music: me as Nazi soldier with my flashlight and this thing as the Von Trapp family hiding in the abbey. But there would be no climbing the verdant Alps to Switzerland on this night; I was persistent.

Whatever this creature might be, it was not bright. No self-awareness where the tail was concerned. It was struggling mightily to keep the rest of its body concealed, but the rattish tail was out there unselfconsciously flapping in the breeze. That tail looked familiar, and I gradually remembered why. I had seen one like it when I accidentally caught a baby opossum in a rat trap (an unfortunate incident, which may or may not have made me cry).

Finally the fugitive was ready to give himself up. Lowered his gray and white fur girth out of his hiding place and stepped into the beam of my flashlight. Big, fat possum. And an affable creature: once he decided the jig was up, he started tightroping across an elevated pipe bridge--there was the metallic scraping!--right toward me.

Posse the Possum. Long last we meet. I was taken with delight. Possums make unobtrusive neighbors, and their appetite for snails, rotten fruit and pre-killed carcasses earn them the nickname 'Mother Nature's cleanup crew.' They don't disturb the garden and, best of all, they are North America's only marsupials! Who wouldn't want to cohabit with a species that carries babies in a pouch?

Posse stopped a few feet away from me. We stared at each other for a while, then went our separate ways. I went back to bed contented, knowing that somehow I wasn't going to mind all the knocking and scraping and thwanking. Because I would think, hey, it's Posse, of the Midnight Marsupial Janitorial Crew, just going along to get along. I still don't know why he makes such a racket; supposedly opossums' jutting eyes give them excellent night vision. But now his awkwardness seems kind of sweet. I'm glad we met.

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The Best Little Gardener in Deep East Oakland

In the far southeast corner of Oakland, where white people aren't, an eleven year-old boy is wondering whether the bulbs are off to a good start, inspecting the cabbage for camouflaged worms and nervously urging the peas up their trellis. Worry is a hallmark of great gardening, and this kid's got it.

Three years ago I needed to scrap together more income, and Dylan, although he didn't know it yet, very much needed a garden at his school. (Laugh now at my supposition that starting an after-school gardening program at a public elementary would be a lucrative lark.)

It didn't take him long to become a gardener. The transition was well underway when we planted crocuses that first fall. He was inspecting the packaging--intense, as usual, while the other kids were wilding out, also as usual. Printed on the crocus package was a flower icon that read "MAR-APR," and he asked me to interpret this.

"March through April. That's when they'll bloom."

Dylan's eyes went wide. His fingers curled like talons grasping prey. His skinny limbs trembled. And he squealed as little ghetto boys are not supposed to squeal: "THAT'S WHEN THEY'LL BLOOM??" Affirmative. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"

We had discussed the bulb concept as a class beforehand, but imagining these brown lumps creating fat purple flowers in a mere (he had a gardener's patience already) five months was just too much.

He quickly learned to identify seedlings. Pale gray-green V sprout? California poppy! And why is it special? Because...Because! Oh! Oh! (Talon hands.) BecauseitsthestateflowerofCalifornia!! He attacked stands of oxalis with rage, ignoring the little girls' pleas that the yellow flowers were pretty. It's a weed, he answered with unveiled disdain. Miss Emma, tell them.

I knew from the start that Dylan was not, for lack of a more circumspect phrase, regular black. His pants were a little too tight and his hair was a little too long. When he came back for a second year of garden class, my only repeat recruit, he was mooning about orchids, which he said reminded him of Belize.

"Are you from Belize?"

He nodded, excited to tell me, and said he had been back over the summer. His fourth grade iteration included new big jeans and a fresh-clipped fade, but he was still kind of a loner and a bit weird. Certainly no other kid would play along when I wanted to talk in British accents. He developed an obsession with tomatillos (planted as a nod to the Mexican half of the class) even though he never quite understood what or why they were.

With Dylan as its stalwart, the garden program gained popularity. During one class I overheard a group of girls talking about how much they loved gardening. Dylan swished past them, busy with his trowel, and said, "I just come for the flowers."

That spring we planted tomatoes from seed. Each kid got to plant a four-inch pot with three seeds to take home. Ten kids in the class, plus the drop-ins who suckered the teacher into letting them plant their own pots too--probably sixty potential tomato plants were in those hopeful pots. Many were banished by parents who hated having their kids touch dirt. Some fell victim to kids' inevitable neglect. But one lucky seed was coddled and sprouted and fawned over and transplanted and in late summer it bore fruit to feed a large Belizian family.

The tomato experience planted a seed in Dylan as well. This year, our third, he began asking me for extra seeds and seedlings to take home and in my harried state I would pour a few seeds into his hand and move on to the next crying catastrophe. Only recently did I come to understand that he had created a vast menagerie of potted plants at home. I try to picture it, the mad scientist amid his many experiments. His mother explained that he had somehow obtained a cob of ornamental corn, painstakingly removed the kernels, and grown some cornstalks.



This fall the veteran fifth-grade Dylan showed the new crop of kids how to plant bulbs. (Two leftover bulbs were destined to join his menagerie.) He ripped open the package of paperwhites with glee, but was disturbed to find the roots already sprouting.

"Miss Emma, they think they're in the soil!" And that's when I knew the transition was complete. He knew what the bulbs were thinking.

Driving away from the school one cold night, jean cuffs dripping, I saw Dylan riding home on the handlebars of his big brother's bike. Seeing him perched so precariously, my little horticultural genius, heading off into the dark of a neighborhood where the murder rate is high and the optimism rate is low, I decided to drop the hardened teacher thing. I thought, I'm just gonna love this kid. /

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Ximena: Love, Loss and Cheek Feathers

By Ximena the Hen

Guest Plogger

Not long ago, I was in an egg. I broke out, let my feathers dry and joined a swirl of other chicks in claustrophobic spaces. I ended up in the gentle hands of a lady human. She called me Ximena and put me on a postal scale and recorded that I weighed 1.5 ounces. I spent my chickhood in a plush box with my broodermate, Winona, who had no cheek feathers.

It was a simple time. I was content to peck at the feed, sip water and swallow it with my head back, careen across the brooder box, and then collapse in a nap. But Winona often treated me unkindly. Once I became sick and in my weakness Winona threatened to peck me to death. And she would have, had not the lady human erected a six-inch fence of hardware cloth between us. I lived through my illness, grew stronger and came to see Winona as fundamentally good-hearted, if awfully pushy. It was just the two of us in a twenty-inch square box, so we became very close. Together we grew our first feathers; they poked awkwardly through our fluffy chick down.

At two weeks old, we were permitted a trip outside. It was glorious. How to describe that first ray of warm sun on my back? The green blades of grass in my beak, the freedom to run--how bright and beautiful it all was! In the backyard we met Camilla. She was a towering figure, a red hen ten times our size. When she came near, we were confined to a wire cage for our safety.

Right away, I admired her. I began to dream of being a big, brassy hen myself one day. On later occasions, Camilla would cluck with me a little, telling her secrets. She too had grown up in a box indoors, with a broodermate named Hennessy. Camilla said she had been tiny just like me! But after two years of squawking and laying eggs and attacking the garden together, Hennessy had become ill and recently died. Camilla believed that we little ones were supposed to bring the coop new life after this loss. I could not really understand this. Also puzzling was the fact that Camilla was just as eager to peck and chase us as initiate us into the world of grown hens.

In time, Winona and I moved out of our box in the human house into a small hutch in the backyard. We were still too small for the coop; Camilla wouldn't have it. Still, we got to see a lot of the big red hen. I think Camilla took a real shine to me. She taught me hen things, like eating bits of bread or tomato out of the hand of the lady human. We called her "Comes Bearing Treats," which I thought was funny. Winona was still full of sass and when we all three roamed the patio in the evenings, she would try to challenge Camilla. This always made me laugh because Camilla was twice her size. But pound for pound, Winona was the scrappiest chicken in town.

Winona started a fun tradition when we lived in the hutch. The hutch was elevated a few feet off the ground and it had a little wooden walkway from the door to the patio below. Whenever Comes Bearing Treats opened the door, we ignored that walkway and flew halfway across the yard! We were wild!

There were certain things about myself I had to learn to accept as I feathered out. Well, mainly one thing: my cheek feathers. You see, I'm an Araucana, an "exotic" South American breed. I look very different in the face from other chickens. Winona called me Mutton Chops and The Bearded Lady, which hurt my feelings. I am also unable to see much of anything in my peripheral field. But Comes Bearing Treats told me my cheek feathers were adorable and my chickie godmother, Comes Bearing Snails, agreed.

One night, a terrible thing happened. I heard sneaking sounds on the hutch roof and then squawks and screams from the coop. Winona and I pressed close to each other, shivering with fear. The light of day found Camilla's body lying on the coop floor, ravaged by a brutal beast. A hungry raccoon had broken in like a thief in the night. For a few days after that, we had to live inside the human house again.

I was so sad for Camilla. She had just lost her friend when she lost her own life too. More tragic still, she had fallen gravely ill and made a stunning recovery just before the raccoon attack. I was also afraid. I could have been killed too.

That was the first harsh blow of my young life, but it would not be the last. Soon after Camilla died, we were allowed to move into the coop (which now had safety retrofits) and Winona began acting strange. She had grown to be much larger than me as we neared henhood, and she seemed meaner even than usual. Every morning, she would lift her head and unleash an awful sound, nothing like the earthy clucks and squawks I'd heard from Camilla and had begun practicing myself. Something in my nascent hen soul told me to fear my old broodermate.

Comes Bearing Treats seemed to be of the same mind. I was fond of my human. When CBT sat in her lounger, I hopped onto her lap or perched on the chair's arm and we sunned together. Now she seemed to know something about Winona that I didn't. She stopped saying "Winona" and said "Wyclef" instead. Only now can I understand what Winona was and always would be: a rooster.

Not long after the morning noises began, Comes Bearing Treats and The Other One took us on a terrible journey. I remember little of it because I was angry and confused. For a moment, I was on a farm faraway and heard the calls of many chickens: roosters, baby chicks and young pullets like myself. I went there in a cage with my old broodermate, but I came home with strangers. One of them was a White Rock pullet, smaller than me, but fiesty. The other was a pipsqueak Maran, and I'm sorry to say, I took my anger out on this little one. I pecked her. I chased her. I regret that now.

I got along just fine with Betsy, the White Rock. She was a no-frills, sensible sort of bird, and I could appreciate that. I was ready to be "No Drama Ximena." With Marianne, it was more complicated. She made a godawful racket when we went to roost. Peeping without ceasing. Betsy always had to come squeeze between us to keep me from pecking Mari. My despair was still raw. Winona had been my flock. I had a lot of big feelings I didn't know what to do with at that time, and poor Marianne bore the brunt.

In time, Marianne matured and Betsy helped me come around and we became a flock, roaming the patio as one. Betsy and Mari joined the proud tradition of going airborne out of the coop when the door was open. That reminds me of Winona. And I taught the new girls to eat bits of bread and tomatoes from the hands of Comes Bearing Treats. I felt comfortable around CBT, who (I now understood) had raised me from a ball of fluff to the proud hen I was becoming.

But the new girls feared her! They ran in terror when she tried to pick them up. I felt bad for them, because they must have come from a place very different from the backyard. They had never known any human like I knew Comes Bearing Treats and Comes Bearing Snails and The Other One. I try to show them the way by flying up onto CBT's lap. Betsy and Marianne are learning to come nearer and sit with us sometimes. When I encourage the others, CBT calls me her "hen cosigner." Whatever that means!

Hearing my story, do you believe that six months ago, I was in an egg? I have seen so much of the world since I broke that shell, its beauty and its pain. But there is one thing I have yet to do. It is my fondest ambition: to lay an egg. .

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