I have read of the future and it could go one of two ways. On the one hand we
could carry on as normal (in the loosest possible meaning of that term) with
the chickens droning on about their concerns and desires. Result—to borrow Mr.
Micawber’s sense of how to construct a phrase—three and a half readers. Or we
could follow the lead of a piece in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/farmer-influencer-youtube.html?searchResultPosition=2
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/farmer-influencer-youtube.html?searchResultPosition=2>
I haven’t yet tried the idea out on the girls, but I imagine the promise of
internet fame might have great appeal.
There are, of course, one or two small problems to overcome. Not everyone
speaks chicken. Visitors to the house have noticed that while the chickens are
clearly very talkative, sometimes it’s a little hard to make out what they are
saying. It’s even more difficult now because Oregon has a new mandate that
those who cannot be assured of social distancing must wear masks, except while
eating. Since chickens eat most of the time their masks don’t get a lot of
use, but if the chickens were being broadcast to the world I’d clearly have to
follow the rules.
Since I don’t include footnotes in these pieces I should quote the Micawber
reference at this point, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds,
annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” I used to
quote that at work, but no one has the ears for that kind of thing in these
dire times.
One of the things that the New York Times piece discusses is the realization
that dawned on the internet farmer: people like their drama to have structure.
He thinks a lot about event and ending. This came up in conversation with B
this week. Act two of my current play has approximately the same dramatic
shape as act two of my last play. Which leads to the question: do people enjoy
variety of structure or even notice it? L and I have been watching DVDs of
“Inspector Banks,” an ITV production. After four series it was glaringly
obvious to me that about minute ten in each episode (I stress “about”) the lead
character says to someone, “My office, now!” Which means he needs to have a
private conversation about a Dramatic Issue. It was a while though before it
dawned on me that this would be where the first commercial break would fall.
Now I find myself wanting the structure to vary. I doubt it will; the
financial circumstances that governed the production did not.
The F.A. cup was the origin of last week’s meandering piece. Somehow the fact
that this was the precipitating event missed the cut. The deal was this: I had
forgotten that the crowd at the Final sings, “Abide With Me,” a hymn I
associate with funerals. I looked into the hymn’s history to see if there was
a connection between the thoughts of a man dying of tuberculosis—that would be
Henry Francis Lyte, the fellow who wrote the words—or the guy who wrote the
tune, and twenty two people kicking a soccer ball. Nope. The story gets
weirder. Before the “tradition” of singing “Abide With Me,” the crowd sang,
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” That switch is the equivalent of your dad jerking
the needle off a Beatles record and saying, “Now we’ll have ‘Onward Christian
Soldiers.’”
Not my real dad…someone’s dad. I suppose I’m thinking of a boy I was at school
with-- very musical, from Paris, who in the era of the Beatles suffered a Dad
who was some high-up in the Salvation Army. No rock and roll for him.
Wondering how he turned out, I put his name into my search engine. Up came a
photo of someone in a Salvation Army uniform who looks very like the boy I
recall. How wonderful the web is.
Life too. I had a truly unusual experience this week, which I shared with both
my wife and the chickens. Hamish experienced it too, so there was no need to
explain to him. As for the cats? Have you ever tried conveying wonder to a
cat?
It happened this way. The field where Hamish and I exercise is visited at this
time of year by insect-eating birds which fly…well I was going to write, “like
planes in a dog fight,” but that doesn’t do justice to either end of the
comparison. They fly like swifts and swallows. This week I finally looked up
which kind of bird we see most often—a barn swallow. Usually there are several
of them. To me they are amazing.
On this day there was only one bird, which at first busied itself at the far
end of the field but soon came to investigate the two of us, the only other
large beings present. And by “investigate” I mean, “fly within feet and inches
of.” Blue on the top, orange below. I could almost tell you the color of the
eyes; the bird flew that close. The question is, why?
My first thought was that the rain had recently stopped and the swallow knew
that under such circumstances humans can attract mosquitos. In this scenario
we were being investigated as potential food sources. Or, second possibility,
the bird was feeling curious or swanky or whatever other impulse might cause it
to interact with a harmless human. The third possibility is that the bird had
something to say and thought that a man who speaks chicken must be able to
manage a word or two of swallow. Alas, no.
I mentioned all this to the chickens. They were incredulous.
Mimo, “You can’t speak swallow?”
“Not a word.”
Appenzeller, “Actually I’m not sure I do. I don’t think I’ve ever heard them
say anything.”
Pecorino, “I find silences can be quite hard to comprehend.”
“Especially when they’re pregnant,” I muttered, and instantly regretted it.
They wanted to know details of the mating procedure and all that. I searched
for a diversion and I came up with a memory of spirits inhabiting animal forms.
“The Scots,” I said, “have a tradition of telling the bees.”
Mimo shoogled her head. “They never listen.”
“You’ve tried talking to them?”
Mimo, “Waste of time. They’re always too busy.”
“Scots used to have this idea that after someone died you stepped outside to
‘tell the bees.’ I think it was an excuse to begin to grieve without the
potentially suffocating good intentions of friends and neighbors.”
Pecorino, “We sometimes sense the presence of those who are no longer present
in feathered form.”
“One of you mentioned Wensleydale some while back. Do the others visit too?”
Appenzeller, “The Flock is never diminished.”
They all nodded. “Yes, yes.”
Mimo, “Those with whom you begin the journey remain throughout its course.”
“So all six of you are still around somehow?”
Pecorino, “We don’t count the rooster. He didn’t belong. So yes, all six.”
“And do you communicate with say, Wensleydale?”
Appenzeller, “We hear echoes of her.”
Pecorino, “Echoes.”
Mimo, “And of course Pecorino reminds us all the time of her tendency to repeat
what was last said.”
“So you think the swallow could have been someone I know?”
Mimo, “Who’s to say? Would anyone in your Flock have something to say at
present?”
“Well last week, as you know,I was thinking about my Dad’s support of Charlton
Athletic football club.”
Appenzeller, “Seems an odd subject for an effort to pierce the veil.”
“On the phone my dad and I generally talked about ‘the golf,’ Charlton, cars.
Oooh, I have been looking at cars!”
Mimo, “There you go. The swallow probably had something to say about your
choice of car. What was he or she doing?”
“A lot of turning, so sometimes I saw the blue feathers and sometimes the
orange ones.”
Appenzeller suddenly seemed a bit smug. “And are any of the cars you’re
looking at either blue or orange?”
“You know, one model comes in either blue or orange.”
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
