I’m down to one chicken on Coleman Farm. One lonely, coal-black chicken. Hester. Though she’s the last of the last, I’ll have you know Hester holds her own. She’s one crafty bird. She scavenges the dogs’ food from under their noses while also laying claim to every delicacy in the kitchen chicken bucket. She’s staked out personal napping territory under the dryer vent, where she reposes in breezy comfort while blowing out her feathers. She is queen of our domain, make no mistake. Most alarming to me, Hester watches me through my back window as if I’m her own reality TV show. With her head tilted to the side and her wide unblinking eyes tracking me, I’m pretty sure she’s shocked by my poor nesting skills.
Having only one chicken has put me in an awkward position. Can I even call myself a chicken lady anymore? Can I wear my chicken pajamas? Can I buy the chicken socks I’ve had my eye on? I’m guessing not. If my grammatical calculations are correct, owning one bird means I should be called a hen lady now. That puts me just one step away from being called an old hen – a step that’s way too close for my comfort. Mornings are dismal around here. My egg-collecting aprons lie unused in the cupboard, gathering dust. If you can believe it, I buy my eggs now. From a store! I even throw away egg cartons when no one is looking – a high crime for a true chicken lady. What have I come to? My kids and friends still send me chicken memes, but I feel unworthy. Flockless. I mean, one chicken cannot flock. One chicken cannot henpeck. One chicken cannot gossip. I guess Hester can still run around in panic like the sky is falling, but otherwise her options have been severely curtailed. And so (sob) have mine.
You might wonder why I don’t just buy more chickens. I can understand that from an outside perspective, my problem seems to have an obvious solution. From the inside though, nothing is ever that simple at our place. We are actually in a very difficult position, one I can’t sugarcoat: We are waiting for Hester to die. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t want Hester to die. We want Hester to live out her happy, wicked, chicken life for as long as she will, but at the same time, we can’t move forward until she crosses that great and final road to get to the other side. For now, we are living in chicken limbo.
Here’s the situation. We currently use an old chicken coop for Hester’s needs that’s probably older than I am. It was a nice coop in its day, but now the cement floor is buckling, the boards are warped and, most to the point, it sits right on the spot where we want to expand our mini-orchard. Our long-term plan is to tear the whole thing down – sagging old eyesore that it is – and rebuild. Hester’s the only thing standing, or I should say roosting, in our way.
Hester has refined tastes and would probably be fine if we built a new coop. I suspect building one is more our problem than hers. In the first place, David doesn’t really want more chickens. He doesn’t say it out loud, but I know the dark secret he carries deep in his shriveled heart. For the past five years, our porch has been covered in chicken droppings. The chickens dug holes in the lawn. They took baths in the dust and ate all the garden’s best tomatoes and red bell peppers. I’m pretty sure David is pretty sure that he can live without the $10 eggs they produced. Maybe he would be open to negotiations if his wife would keep her feathered ladies confined in a chicken run, but despite my best intentions, I always turn into a free-range chicken lady.
Still, I can’t help but advocate for them and their better qualities. “Dave!” I insist. “Free-range chickens are free fertilizers! They are spreading sunshine all around this farm.” I’m not sure I’m helping my cause. One spring David shoveled out the chicken run and coop and then spread the chika-ma-nure all over the garden. Just a few wheelbarrows of chicken power, that’s all he used, and the middle of our garden was so hot nothing grew there for years. Years.
What kind of chicken coop are we supposed to build nowadays anyway? So many people have become hobby chicken owners, things have gotten way out of hand. Do we build a spaceship coop? Do we give the girls a disco ball, chicken swings and a chicken xylophone? The pressure to be cute on the family farm has never been greater. There are chicken flock blocks, chik-nic picnic tables and chicken hamster balls. Little red barn coops and multistory loft coops. I’m half holding out for a self-cleaning coop. If someone invents one, I’m moving the whole family into it.
I probably don’t have to worry. I mean, who am I kidding? Hester will never die. She’s a Teflon-coated, genius-level, fast, slippery, cunning, crafty, scrappy, immortal bird. She’s survived everything – dogs, kids, cats, cars, tractors, mowers – that has come at her. She’s lost her feathers and her dignity more than once, and yet she just keeps clucking. Hester is probably just waiting for us to die, so she can tear down our old house and put in a dog-proof chicka-condo. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.
