Then there were two. I considered when I sat down to write maybe
taking up elements from last week’s Cowboy tale or, second option, as they do
in Tristram Shandy, somehow creating an entire black page, with green
luminesce. But the fact is, I don’t have that latter skill, so: on Friday
night Appenzeller died of old age in her sleep, a rare good end for a chicken.
I knew she wasn’t feeling herself A couple of weeks back she spent a
whole day inside and she hadn’t for quite some time been able to fly up to the
perch, but this did not remove any the bossiness and greed from her behavior.
When I took a pair of melon rinds out and then scattered the seeds in a third
place, she’d run from one spot to the next, “This is mine, and this. This
too!” Mimo not fight her about it—she’s too small for that—but she’d have
plenty of commentary. Pecorino was more patient, simply stepping where where
the others weren’t, convinced that there was plenty to go around.
One morning last week Pecorino and Mimo emerged from the coop, but no
Appenzeller. I asked where she was.
“Can’t stop,” said Mimo, rushing over towards where she lays eggs.
“Dunno,” said Pecorino. “Downstairs, I expect. Usually is.” On she
went about harvesting her share of the feed. And then she walked round to the
far side of the kitchen and there, Paradise gained, she found melon rind and
melon seeds with no one else to claim them. Pecorino often has a kind of a
puzzled look about her face; that morning she beamed and looked puzzled. Which
is a tough trick.
Appenzeller joined her soon after so there was nothing for Mimo until I
saw the problem and tossed out a moldy muffin. Normal day. At lunchtime I
told them about the guy from Oklahoma. When I was walking with Hamish up by
the elementary school, we watched a tractor-trailer come to a loud halt. I
can’t tell an eighteen wheeler from a sixteen wheeler, but with an enormous
crane on the back I’d guess the vehicle was about as big as they come. Our
neighborhood’s roads are altogether too small and light for such vehicles;
whether by design or coincidence I don’t know, but almost all of the roads have
sharp turns and narrow exits. I wondered how was he going to get out. And
what was he doing there in the first place?
I walked on. The truck came driving by and applied air brakes. The
driver climbed down and came over. I entertained the chickens with my report
of the following exchange. Glancing at his license plate, I opened with,
“You’re a long way from Oklahoma.” Whether his was an Oklahoma accent or not,
I couldn’t tell, but it certainly was thick and from the South.
“Sir, is there a hah scheul in the vicinity?”
“Not in this neighborhood. Only the elementary school. Which high school are
you looking for?”
“They said it was just acrawss the free-way?”
“Sunset?”
“I didn’t catch the name.”
(It occurred to me the problem could be he was illiterate and covering for that
lack of skill, but I couldn’t understand why the GPS wasn’t taking him where he
needed to go. Someone being this lost nowadays is rare, is it not?)
“There are a number of schools in the vicinity of the freeway.”
“I have to fand a cell phone tower near a hah scheul.”
“You’ll have difficulty getting out of the neighborhood. Let me think.”
I mapped in my head a route with turns I thought he might manage and sent him
towards Sunset high school. If that wasn’t his destination, he would at least
be in an area where the roads better accommodate trailer trucks. My question
to the chickens was, “Who comes all the way from Oklahoma and knowing that
little about the destination? Was he from the nineteenth century, caught in a
time warp?”
Mimo, “Probably started in the Mississippi flyway and got confused.”
Appenzeller, “Accidentally turned left into the Pacific Flyway.”
Pecorino, “Bit late in the year for migration hereabouts, wouldn’t you say?”
They all nodded.
“Still,” said Appenzeller, “...funny sort of a year.”
Mimo, “Absolutely.”
Pecorino, “You can say that again.”
Appenzeller didn’t say it again. Instead she said, “I feel a little funny
myself.”
You’ll have noted the similarity to the Cowboy Bob story last week. If there
were any kind of foreshadowing intended it was subliminal on my part.
I went out the next day, early and full of the joys of Spring. The
chickens had been noisy since dawn. I assumed they were embracing the day
impatiently, wanting to get out and get on. What they had been saying that my
sleepy mind had not understood correctly was, “Call 911!” Or the chicken
equivalent thereof. Two birds emerged; the third lay with her head and neck on
the ground, limp, not yet stiff but in an un-natural position. Lifeless.
Mimo was off laying another egg, Pecorino stopped to chat. “Did you
know,” I asked her, “that the president of Somalia is called ‘the Cheese.?'”
“How lovely,” she said, without much enthusiasm.
“Farmaajo. I read it in the newspaper.”
“Why is he so called?”
“Because his father’s favorite food was cheese.”
“Wait,” said Pecorino, “is that how we came to have these weird names?”
“It is indeed. All gods hereabouts love cheese.”
Mimo wandered up, “Cheese? We’d like a bit of cheese!”
Here’s a puzzle to ponder in the period of mourning. Among the
chickens’ favorite weeds is the dandelion. That word clearly emerged from the
French, dents de lion, teeth of the lion. But the French today have a
different term for dandelion, pis en lit, wet the bed. Can you think of other
examples of terms that were once in use in one language became favorite in
another and awere then abandoned in the Mother Tongue?
Answers to this e mail address.
When I returned from walking Hamish just now Mimo greeted me.
“Weeeeeds?”
I handed her some.
“Where’s Pecorino?”
“Off.”
I went to look. A feature of our chickens’ behavior has been internal friction
but bonding when faced by external threat. Sometimes Mimo would forage
separately, but usually all three were to be found together. I found Pecorino
sitting in the coop near where Appenzeller died. She made inquisitive sounds.
I said, “I’ll get you some weeds,” and went to the front yard to pull some from
the raised beds. Behind me I heard chirps. There was Pecorino. She readily
tucked into what was offered. All by herself.
David etc.
