Keeping Chickens

It seemed like a good idea when Mike and Diane brought home the seven baby chicks: there would be one for each of them and the two boys, plus a few spares. There was plenty of room for a coop and ranging yard on their property. Mike planned to build a hen house and put up a fence. The chickens would have freedom to roam—more than the so-called free-range chickens you could buy at the co-op grocery stores that abounded in their town. The family would enjoy cheap, fresh eggs, and maybe once in a while they would dine on a chicken they’d raised themselves. The boys each named their chicken: Shane called his Tree, and Matthew named his Zorgon. But things didn’t go quite according to plan. Do they ever, when animals and small children are involved?

Kona, the family dog, is part border collie. He never sits still if there’s someone around to throw him a Frisbee. Herding the five goats on Mike and Diane’s two-acre property is his main doggie job. It turns out he’s also a pretty good hunter. He must have assumed that the new chicks were just one of the perks of his job. He caught and ate two of them before Mike could get the henhouse built. Kona is smart, though, and once Mike and Diane convinced him that the chickens were off limits and indeed were his new charges, he left them alone.

That didn’t stop the coyotes, however. Two more chicks disappeared within a week, even after the coop was in place. Mike figured that the chicks would bed down there and be safe at night, but that’s not how it worked out. Either the coyotes were smart enough to open the henhouse doors, or the chicks were caught wandering in the yard. So Mike started locking the chickens into their coops at night. During the day, Kona guarded the yard from predators looking for a tender, free snack.

Three hens survived to gorgeous, buff-and-gold-feathered adulthood and began laying. Most days you could open their coops and find one or two freshly laid golden brown eggs. Since there is no rooster, the unfertilized eggs would simply rot if left in the coop, so the boys gathered the eggs every day. Farm-fresh eggs—how fine! And they were, until the boys caught sight of what the chickens ate: they saw one of the chickens walking across the yard, a garter snake wriggling in its beak. In a few seconds the snake was gone, consumed in a few squirmy bites by the omnivorous chick. Now the only person who would touch the eggs was Mike: Diane and the boys were not interested in eating snakes, bugs, and worms, even if only by proxy.

Zorgon, Tree, and the nameless spare chicken now roost in the clematis vines under Shane and Matthew’s bedroom window and enjoy a fine life as family pets, protected by the loyal Kona and assured of a long life and, probably, death of old age. This family would rather eat a block of tofu than one of their free-range friends.

Wiener Wraps

School Lunches, Take 2 May 21, 2008

The best school lunch at Lakewood Elementary was wiener wraps. On wiener wrap days, you begged your mom for 50 cents to buy a hot lunch instead of the usual lunch box packed with some variation on the sandwich, fruit, and dessert theme. On wiener wrap days you began to notice the aroma of baking bread around math time, maybe 10 am. By the time Miss Gackle stood at the classroom door and ordered the 5th grade class to line up for lunch, the smell filled every cranny of the old school building, overpowering the smell of chalk dust, dirty tennis shoes, and unwashed pre-teens, and everyone was crazy with anticipation. Instead of the usual shoving and goofing off, everyone behaved perfectly, marching in a straight line all the way down the hall to the cafetorium, not wanting to risk any infraction that would impede the trip to the lunch line. With the possible exception of Mike, who never had lunch money anyway and knew he wouldn’t succeed at cadging anyone else’s today. Mike was his usual off-kilter self, zigzagging down the hall six feet or so behind the rest of us, arms outspread, zooming, whooshing, and buzzing his way along.

The cafeteria ladies made these amazing things from scratch. Fresh white bread dough spiraled around plump, juicy hot dogs and was allowed to rise until the dogs were all but hidden, enfolded in their yeasty bread wrappers. Hot from the oven, they were served, two to a tray, steaming and golden brown. In the round indent next to them on the fiberglass tray a cafeteria lady plopped a glob of bright yellow mustard. After another cafeteria lady plunked a carton of milk in the square indentation on the tray, you now possessed a complete meal, Lakewood’s finest cuisine. No hamburger gravy on mashed potatoes or Salisbury steak with tater tots or, god help us, fish sticks, today!

You had to savor them, not gobble them in a couple of bites. First, you dipped the end—a bit of pink hot dog peeking out of the golden bread—in the mustard. Then, you took a bite, making sure you got a cross section of the concoction in your mouth—a chunk of hot dog surrounded by its cocoon of bread. In a properly configured bite, you first tasted the tangy mustard, then you bit down on savory meat, its juices bursting on your molars, then you chewed the slightly crunchy, warm bread and finished with a swig of milk. You repeated this until you’d finished both the wraps, using just enough of the mustard with each bite so that there was some left to mop up with the last bit of hot dog and bread. Then, you regretted that there was no more. You would ask around, and see if maybe any of your friends weren’t going to finish theirs. This was highly unlikely, but worth a try. You had to gently but firmly brush Mike off if he pestered you for some of yours.

Character exercise 5

From "The Fiction Writer's Workshop"

Robert Downey Jr.
His face is thin but not gaunt, and it’s punctuated with sets of vertical lines like brackets or exclamation points. Two extend from his long, straight nose up into his forehead, especially when he grimaces. A pair of lines bridges the gap between his nose and upper lip. Another pair on either side of his nose provides definition and depth to his otherwise flat cheeks. His jaw is another sharp line: a bracket running from ears to chin, intersecting with a vein that runs from beneath his ear straight down his neck. All that straightness makes those round, dark brown, heavy lidded eyes that much more arresting.
He is full of stops and starts: stillness, then a cut of the eyes, wrinkle of the nose, arch of the eyebrows, quick flash of that dazzling boyish smile followed by a snarl, a smirk, a grimace. Then, more stillness, as if to emphasize the brilliant range of movement that preceded it. His movements seem casual, offhand, yet never random. He releases his energy gracefully, generously, purposefully. He is taut, nimble, playful, elegant.

Val Kilmer
Everything about this man’s face is smooth and rounded. His teeth are like a row of white pebbles, a string of ivory beads between full, padded lips. His forehead is high and broad. His cheeks are like two apricots, warm and fleshy and smooth. Between the apricot cheeks is a wide nose. The chin below his upturned mouth is an echo of that smiling curve.
This man hoards movement like a miser on a hill of gold. Every motion is precise, controlled. His face and body are quiet, calm, with tension just beneath the surface like a cat poised to spring. He moves like a well-oiled machine. No nervous tics or fidgeting, just smooth, tight economy of gesture. He seems to gather and absorb the energy of those around him, like padded walls in an asylum, never diverted from his purposeful stillness.