Another Day in the Country

Hope springs eternal

By PAT WICK

Contributing writer

It’s that time of year — the season of new beginnings. The world is full of hope as the earth turns on its axis and the weather warms. New life emerges.

Right about this time every year I’ve been in Kansas, I survey my garden and smile. It’s lovely. The ground is fertile and newly tilled. Pre-annuals peak through soil and volunteerism is on the rise. Bulbs unlock their tightly held secrets of joy, irises are in bloom, and the world is beautiful.

I sat Sunday night — actually sat — in stillness beside my little backyard pond, watching the fish play, and marveled at it all. It wasn’t a new feeling, marveling. I do it every year, right about this time, delighted with near perfection. And then something happens.

Life. That’s what happens. Life with all its joyous new beginnings and sudden surprises. Life with its unseasonably hot sun that suddenly withers the new tender plantings. Life with wind that turns in on itself and wreaks havoc. Threats, and sometimes the delivering of hail, and my near perfect garden is ravaged and never quite looks the same for the rest of the summer season.

In this season of new beginnings, I mentioned in a previous column that my replenished flock of young chicks was killed by the neighbor’s dogs. I don’t believe I told you that one chick, one lucky little pubescent, wanna-be hen, survived. When the dogs knocked open the chicken house door and barged in, she evidently flew out.

She headed for the house. Ironically, that was where it had all started for her. She’d spent several weeks in the bathtub of the house, my house, and it still seemed like the safest place for her. She couldn’t get in the back windows so she tried the garage when it was dark and luckily the door was open for a spell. Unbeknownst to me, she went in, flew up on the highest boxes she could find, and roosted for the night.

The next morning I came out, opened the garage door — preparing to drive away — and I spied this chicken-shape up on top of the storage boxes.

“A chicken shape up there?” I wondered.

I didn’t remember putting any ceramic chicken (yes, I’ve been making ceramic chickens) up there. On closer scrutiny, I realized this was no painting of a chicken, no chicken card, no chicken made of clay. This was a real, live chick. I closed the garage door, climbed up, and rescued my one little chick.

Early in the morning, after all the other chicks had been laid waste, my dear sister was in my backyard cleaning out the chicken house. It was my Mother’s Day gift from her.

“I wanted it all refreshed,” she said.

And so, we placed our one chick in the coup.

Now what? We had one chick, yet to be named in this little chicken house and one black hen — survivor from a previous dog-attack, in the other chicken house across the street. This was the hen I dubbed the Virgin Mary because she had laid a clutch of eggs and was trying to hatch them, long after the rooster was dead and her other hen friends had met their maker. When the new chicks arrived, she scared them silly with her presence and we’d had to separate them.

Adoption hadn’t seemed to suit her but “How about the Buddy system?” I asked her as I brought her over to be with our survivor chick. She was not amused or ready to be of any solace, as far as I could see. She set about to rule the roost and our almost teenager chick flew up to the highest point of the chicken coup and stayed there, looking almost like a hen, but calling plaintively like a frightened chick.

This went on for more than a week. I worried that the chick wasn’t getting enough food and water. The Virgin Mary paced and fretted. And then one day things changed. They were both on the ground. No one was running or stewing. Amazing.

And then I took goodies out to the chicken pen and Mary called to the younger chick to come eat, as if she were the mother hen calling her chicks or the rooster calling his flock.

“What?”

I called my sister with the good news. Later, Jess went out to check on our remaining two chickens and she reported, “Would you believe they are both roosting in the nest box? They are cuddled together like Mary is trying to cover the chick!”

Peace reigns at last in the chicken house.

It’s another day in the country; Mary has taken over the role as Mother Earth. Hope springs eternal.