Another Day in the Country
The makings of a flock
Contributing writer
Three weeks ago, on the morning that Daylight Saving Time began, I got a call from the post office in Salina. Lazy in bed, oblivious to time passing faster on this morning, I didn’t hear the phone ring. They left a message.
“Your chicks are in,” the voice said. “You can either come collect them by 10:30 or we’ll deliver them tomorrow in Ramona.”
I started multi-tasking big-time, as I grabbed my britches in one hand and the phone in the other, dialing my friend Kathy (she’s the postmaster in Ramona).
“Kathy, where is the post office in Salina? I don’t even know.”
She gave me directions and then said, “I’ll call them and tell them you are on your way.”
I had barely an hour to get there and Salina is an hour away.
He waited. I made it and so did the chicks. We peaked inside the little box that held 26 day-old chicks. So cute! All the way home, sitting on the truck seat beside me, they cheeped in alarm. Luckily, I’d prepared the Chicken Nursery the day before — the tub in the guest bathroom. Turning them free one by one with a practice drink for beginners, I sat back and looked at the makings of my new flock of chickens.
There’s quite a variety. I have a dozen of my favorite Aracauna who laid those lovely colored eggs. Always wanting to experiment with new breeds, I ordered half a dozen rose-combed browns, whatever they are. They were such pretty chickens in the catalog. I have another half dozen Polish topknots who look like little German soldiers with their helmets on. There are four silver spangled Hamburgs, shy and retiring (never ever raised them before), and a Mystery Chick.
For those of you who have raised chickens, you know how fast they grow. In days, the wing feathers are coming in. In a week, the tail feathers are there like little tri-cornered fans. In two weeks, the chicks were outgrowing the bathtub, making flying forays to the edge of the tub. With cold weather continuing, I said to my sister, “I think I’d better give them a little more room and put them in my Jacuzzi tub.”
For the next week, I was sleeping with the chicks.
On Saturday, a beautiful warm day, I moved the flock of chicks out to the little chicken house in my yard where V. Mary has been holding forth — alone. She was calm but perturbed at rumors that her single-family dwelling was going to be a boarding house. I watched her closely to see if her reaction was cooperative or hostile, praying for a spark of motherly tolerance. She was deciding.
The first of the chicks were frozen in terror at their new surroundings — and by the big black hen. They’d survived periodic inspections by my cat, Marshmallow, but this Mama was something else. She glistened, she made alarming noises, she strutted, and she raised her hackles. When all of them had been transported, one of the chicks approached V. Mary (who desperately needs a new name) with false bravado, his chest thrust out, as if to take her on. She fixed him with one beady black eye and “pop” pecked him on the top of the head and he retreated fast, lesson learned.
I banned her to the chicken pen for the rest of the day while the chicks adjusted.
My little flock is fine. It isn’t all lovey-dovey, but there is a modicum of tolerance — (it reminds me of Ramona). The chicks think that I’m their mother. I definitely spell safety for them and if V. Mary is disrupting things, they huddle near the door where they hope I’ll appear or they hide behind the screen that I put up as a shield in one corner and warm themselves under the brooder lamp.
I’ve only named one chick so far, my little Polish rooster with new spiked feathers shooting out the top of his head. One of my third-grade art students came to class last week with the makings of a Mohawk. I’ve named my new little rooster, Braxton.
Chickens in the bathtub created an awful mess. I had to clean the room from ceiling to floor. There was this thick insidious film of dust over everything: chrome, tile, tub, floor, sills, woodwork, light fixtures, ledges, plants, towels, and soap. Luckily, raising chicks in the tub only happens once in a blue moon.
In California, my other life, I remember we had hamsters in the office, mice in a kitchen drawer, a pack-rat in the garage, kittens under the bed, a garter snake in my shoe, an injured cat recuperating in the shower, and even a couple of baby rabbits in the bathtub; but never chicks. We saved that experience for another day in the country.