As I was hanging out the washing on a very hot day, Mimo and Pecorino came up.
“We’d like a quiet word.”
“Before you-know-who arrives.”
I feigned innocence, “Who would that be?”
Mimo spat the word out, “Fatty.”
I tut tutted, “A bit harsh, don’t you think? Calling anyone that?”
“She’s twice the size of me.”
“Thinks she’s the boss of me.”
I said they could have my full attention after I finished the hanging.
“Can’t interrupt a hanging,” Mimo reasoned.
“Oooh no.” Pecorino. “Serious business hanging. Keeps the sky predators away.”
“We’re in favor of hanging.”
They wandered around making coo-ing noises while I finished with the socks and
smalls. Then I went to sit in the shade. First thing, I assured them,
"Appenzeller gets no food inside our house. She just sleeps in the bathroom.”
“What’s a bathroom?”
“You were raised in one.”
They thought for a while, moving their heads from side to side. First one eye
up, then t’other. I could see hints of memory being hauled like huge stones
pulled on seaweed from ancient coastline.
“Was it by any chance pink?”
I nodded. “Bathtub… from the nineteen fifties.”
Pecorino, “With the light of an eternal sun?’
“There was a lamp to keep you warm.”
“No, no,” said Mimo.
“No, no,” Pecorino echoed.
“Can’t remember a thing.”
“We’d have to see it.”
“Nice try,” I said. Not promising.
“Anyway,” Mimo resumed, “we’d like a coach.”
“A coach?”
“Yes, to help us reach our health goals.”
“Which would be?”
In unison, “We want to put on weight.”
Mimo added, “Double in size.”
“You’d like to become the size of Appenzeller.”
Mimo nodded, “With all the rights and privileges appertaining.”
Pecorino, “To a fatty.”
Mimo agreed, “A royal fatty.”
“You’re abandoning the equality of the poultriarchy?”
In unison, “Updating.’
“You’re updating the idea of the poultriarchy?”
“We desire the equality of queens.”
“We’re thinking Polynesian.”
I was going to ask how they knew of Polynesia, but Mimo pushed on explaining
that she’d also like to learn to avoid laying eggs. “Pecorino hasn’t been able
to tell me and Appenzeller, well she’s got no time for the likes of me.”
“Why do you want to stop laying eggs?”
“Tactics.”
“You don’t think that would be a bit of a liability in a fight, all your eggs
stored inside?” I had a vision of a Sumo wrestler full to the brim with eggs.
Mimo had thought this one through, “A balloon full of water and a balloon full
of broken eggs…weigh the same.”
Appenzeller came running up, “What have I missed? Pizza?”
I said, “You’re insatiable.”
Pecorino muttered, “All right for some.”
We left it at that.
Mimo drank too much milk in one single gargle and so threw up. Appenzeller
strode over, “Oooh, processed milk.” Supped it. Walked off. Pecorino sidled
over.
“How does one get there?”
“Where?”
“Satiable.”
“I’m not following.”
“You said she was in ‘satiable.’ I’d like to go there.”
“Insatiable isn’t a place; it’s a state.”
She mulled this over. “A state’s a place. We live in one.”
“Of *being*. A state of being.”
“Well I’d like to *be* there. Getting fat. Any luck finding us a coach?”
“If you want to get fat, you’ll have to get fat under your own steam.”
Mimo joined us, “Steam’s about right. Can you do something about this heat?”
“It’s not all fun…being fat.” I said, having put on a pound or two during my
recent travels.
I swear the nearest I can come to describing what happened next was hens doing
the hula. If I’d been carrying a phone I'd have recorded it.
When she’s in her soporific state, I lift Appenzeller off the roosting pole and
put her in the cat carrier, which comes indoors. There’s no pole in the
carrier, so she crouches on the floor as she crosses the threshold between
chicken territory and that of the gods. Who knows what goes through her head
alone and inside the cool but alien space? To judge by her demeanor when we
release her in the morning, I think the others’ envy is misplaced. “Why don’t
you discuss it with her?” you ask. To which I can only reply that one of my
rules as I get older is avoiding all conversation with grumpy chickens.
David Ritchie,
Portland,
Oregon------------------------------------------------------------------
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