You’ll maybe have heard a word or two on the news about tomorrow’s eclipse and
the efforts Science is making to discover stuff. Hereabouts we have been
surprised that neither NASA nor NAPA (the National Associated Poultry
Association) has decided to record the chickens’ reaction to temporary
darkness. If the girls exhibit interesting behavior, we may never know. L.
and I will be elsewhere, off a’watching.
Tillamook picked the Saturday before the eclipse as a good day for a
performance of my Churchill and Eisenhower play. The cast and director
wondered whether traffic would be bumper to bumper from Portland to the coast,
but the forecast changed. Cloud cover is now likely tomorrow, so watchers
picked other spots. An audience of about forty turned up and witnessed the
best show yet. Afterwards we had a “cast party” on a fishing dock. Churchill
brought his rod and cast for salmon; he caught the tiniest bottom-feeding
something or other, and threw it back.
I met with the director to talk about the next play and other business. I
passed across a DVD of one of my favorite films, “The Valet.” It’s a French
farce. The plot turns on “un top model” moving in with a guy who parks cars
for a living. I was reminded of this when I exercised Hamish; the owner of a
Weimar Reiner has the look of “un top model.” We had a chat which, I’m pretty
sure, is a sign I’m moving into “old geezer” category of man. Either that or
Hamish is a bit of a babe magnet.
Late at night, when I lift Appenzeller off the perch, she’s mostly asleep. She
generally mutters something which sounds like, “Buck, buck, buuuuuuck.” At
least I think the first letter is a “b.” When I slot her into the box, she
stretches her neck and could easily bang her head so, like the police on the
news when suspects are getting into the back of a car, I protect her scalp with
my hand, apply gentle pressure, close the door to the carrier and then lift it
into the downstairs bathroom. There she’s cool and quiet and absolutely in the
dark. In the garage she crowed; here she doesn’t. Every night Hamish sticks
his nose into the room to check what’s going on. I have to remind myself not
to use that toilet. Imagine that surprise!
Appenzeller’s first thought each morning is to show the other two who’s boss.
Mimo gets chased away from the food bucket; Pecorino hurries away to inspect
the Himalayan berries. Within a minute though they all settle into
companionability, moving as a tight three. The only crowing comes when Mimo
goes off to lay an egg.
“I’ve lost my harem! She's gone! I’ve lost Mimo.”
I walk over to the air conditioner. Milo looks up and gives me her “what can I
say?” look.
“One minute it’s ‘bugger off I get to eat first,’ the next it’s, ‘I’ve lost my
harem.’ I mean…do I look like someone who lives in a harem?”
“Frankly,” I began…
“You’ve never seen anyone who lives in a harem…Neither have I. But you take my
point?”
“Yup.”
“I mean it’s an identity thing. That twit…is trying to redefine me.”
“The world knows who you are, Mimo. No doubt about that.”
“The *world*? How would anyone beyond the fence know anything about us?”
I feigned innocence, “Little birds?”
“Bloomin’ chatterboxes they are.”
“They do seem to improve your stock of knowledge.”
“Even chatterboxes have their uses.”
David Ritchie,
Portland,
Oregon------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
