We bought groceries earlier in the week so today we had the luxury of sleeping in. Finally the heat wave in this Flyover State has broken and last night the temperature dipped into the fifties. A very welcome change, and I opened all the windows.
As a friend of mine who does fung shui said "Opening the windows gets all the bad qi (chi) out of the house."
Aside from the bad qi of a very hot s ummer, we have allergies and rarely open the windows. Now stoked with antihistamine we open every window and screen door, and let all the air circulate all night. A wonderful feeling until very early this morning when something other than the light wind whispering through the surrounding trees disturbed our peaceful slumber.
Squawk. Squawk.
Louder Squawk.
Whatever this torment was seemed to be coming from our roof.
Since The Great Recession began, most of our neighbors have started gardens and some are even in the "Suburban Chicken Movement." I'm a farm girl, but I'm still stunned to see flocks of chickens in the manicured yards of this neighborhood.
To each her own--must be great to have fresh eggs daily.
We hear the randy rooster about 24/7 but this morning it was unbearable. Saturday morning, sixty-thirty a.m.
Squawk. Squawk. Squawk.
With each reverberation of that red gullet, I felt he was saying, "Get up. Get up. Time's a wastin'."
Apparently our local rooster is a member of the Red Team, because we turned on the TV even before getting out of bed and "Breaking News" was everywhere -- Romney To Choose Paul Ryan.
Husband crawled out of bed and looked out the front door.
"You have to come and see this," he said, dragging my sorry Saturday morning ass out of bed.
There on our tiny brick porch was Mr. Rooster and his two hens, making a little symphony of their own about three feet from our bedroom window.
We debated what to do. We're not anti-chicken, we're just anti-chicken on our front porch at six in the morning.
BB gun perhaps? Maybe banging some aluminum pans together?
As the other non-chicken farm stood staring at me in his "Stewie" pajama pants, I slammed the front door, hoping to jar them back to their coop five houses down.
They were unimpressed and stood there looking at us, then continued their cacophony of crowing.
At their leisure, they slowly turned and walked away, down the hill and into the neighbor's yard -- not even looking back.
I asked the husband, "What drew them here?"
This started about a half an hour of chicken puns from my Beloved.
The chickens have come home to roost
They didn't want to cross the road
Our neighbors chickens weren't all in one basket
We shouldn't count our chickens before they are hatched
This madness must stop, so I'll end with one old chicken saying that says it all, "The rooster may make all the noise, but everyone knows it is the hen who rules the roost."
Enjoy today. No need to be cooped up on a beautiful day like this one.
Henny Penny.
