Frustration bubbles up hereabouts not, as you usually hear the metaphor, like
water in a pan on the boil, but more like the tiny bubbles in cider or
champagne. Which is not to suggest they are completely harmless. Now and then
there goes one and eventually I register that several have passed through my
view. I imagine the larger signs of impatience are as evident where you may be
as they are here: more noise from the roads and the beginnings of traffic,
driveways decorated with a new electric tool theme as people tear their houses
apart and fix things, leaf blowers used at full volume as if rage at Nature’s
detritus were going to solve something.
But it’s the smaller stuff I’m noticing: the race from coop to food every
morning looks a tad more serious than it once did, with Pecorino always first
one out and Mimo always blocking the way when she gets there. While I was
hanging out my washing Appenzeller invervened to prevent Mimo from preventing
Pecorino from getting at the food. Then Pecorino disappeared. Several times
this week I’ve checked her cunning hiding place and found nothing, so I thought
I’d do a sweep. Sure enough, there she was nestled under the sleeping
quarters. I came in to type. There was a big kerfuffle. When I went out all
three were strolling up and down and puffing. No egg.
Mimo needs taking down a peg or two. I do not know all the laws of Nature and
Poultry, but I’d have thought that disturbing someone while she is trying to
lay an egg must be up there among the Big Unwritten Ones. The consequence is
that in spite of my best efforts I have not found a single Pecorino egg this
week (They’re a different shape from Mimo’s.) She does disappear now and then,
but whether it’s to lay or merely to plot revenge I cannot tell.
Everything else continues as was. J. checks in from Pennsylvania when she can.
We see E. and N. and do the “can’t touch you with a barge pole” shuffle. The
semester is coming to a close with lots of, “I’m sorry this is so late.”
My own frustration is that someone put a “No Trespassing” sign up at the school
and to make the meaning plain they had a police cruiser idle there for an hour
or so, burning up fuel I’d paid good tax dollars for. Why American cops can’t
switch their engines off, I can only guess.
The right view of these bubbles of frustration is to think, “Wait a minute,
where there are bubbles there could be champagne.” Consider this story in the
New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/world/europe/Baarle-Hertog-Nassau-belgium-netherlands-coronavirus.html
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/world/europe/Baarle-Hertog-Nassau-belgium-netherlands-coronavirus.html>
You’ll notice that in the photo the owner of the art gallery is standing in one
country, and leaning across into the other. The obvious way to stay in
business, had she not registered it in Belgium, would have been to sell art
only from one side of the room just like the clothing store you read about
lower down. In case you can’t be bothered, I’ll tell you that the owners found
they had to partition their store because Belgium closed down and Holland
didn’t. Those wanting to buy underwear were out of luck. “Underwear, love?
Sorry, ours is in Belgium.”
There was also a piece in the NYT about egg producers being sued for price
gouging. I risked reading some of this to the chickens, who immediately wanted
to know how to gouge a price and what might result.
Pecorino, “Could it become a hobby?”
“It’s something antelope do,” said Mimo, with an air of confidence. “Steers
too.”
“You’ve never seen either, how would you know?”
Appenzeller, “She talks to birds.”
“Well then,” I said, seizing the moment to deflate, “answer me this. Why are
there no chickens in the Tower of London?”
Not even a beat. “Corvids,” was her reply. “Chased them out. Our traditional
enemy, you know, incompatible as the Shoshone and the Crow, into whose lands
the buggers moved.”
“That’s a bit dense,” I said. “Leaping from the Tower of London to a Plains
Indian dispute over territory. You’ll lose readers.”
Pecorino, “What are readers?”
“Me. I’m one.”
Mimo, “So you’re worried I’m going to cause you to lose yourself? That thought
could confuse a stupid bird.”
When you kill a chicken it’s not regarded as murder, is it? Unless you’re
vegan, and if you’re that, what would you do with the eggs? Chuck them at meat
eaters? Leave them to decay?
“I’ve been reading about the Menagerie in the Tower, which was one of two, the
other being on land near Oxford now occupied by Blenheim Palace…”
“…where Winston Churchill was born…” Mimo was on a roll.
“Exactly. And in the Tower at various times they had a polar bear which fished
for salmon in the Thames, an elephant, some lions, all of them gifts from
kings…But no chickens. I’d have thought that since the royal family took
shelter there from time to time, a stock of eggs would have been a good thing.”
Mimo, “Were they vegans?”
“People with power? Occasional cannibal feast, if Shakespeare is to be
believed.”
Appenzeller, “There was probably too much price gouging. In the Tower.”
“Certainly gouging…”
Pecorino, “Ooooooh, good point.”
“What is?”
“At the sharp end of a beak,” said Mimo. “Ravens did the gouging.”
“God help me,” I muttered. “So that’s why they still keep ravens in the Tower?”
Mimo nodded sagely, “In memory of the gouging, yes.”
The other two walked up and down. “Very wise,” was what someone said, though
whether the reference was to keeping ravens in reserve should the need for
gouging return, or a complement to Mimo, I do not know.
Pecorino might be forgiven for being sparing with complements right now, but
maybe she’s playing a long game and flattery is part of some great strategy
that leads to the downfall of our former Presidential candidate.
All very bubbly, but with Shakespearean overtones hereabouts.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
