Made by Hand

by Mark Frauenfelder

  With her assistant holding Ethel, Dr. Mao pried open Ethel’s beak and shined a flashlight down her throat. It was hard for me to see what was in there, besides her comically pointed tongue, but I caught a glimpse of a little slit that was opening and closing.

  “That’s where you don’t want to give her the medicine,” said Dr. Mao. “That’s the opening to her trachea, called the epiglottis. If you put the syringe there, it’ll deliver the medicine to her lungs.”

  “I don’t see any other place to stick the syringe, though,” I said. “Where’s the throat hole?”

  “It’s hard to see,” she said. “Let’s take another look.” She opened Ethel’s beak again and aimed the flashlight down her throat. Ethel made a gasping sound. All I could see was a pink tube.

  “The hole is kind of folded shut,” she said. “That’s why it’s hard to see. Here, I’ll give her some of the medicine, and you can watch me.”

  She filled the syringe with the pink antibiotic and pushed it into Ethel’s open beak. Ethel kicked her legs and hissed. Moving the syringe to the right side of Ethel’s epiglottis, Dr. Mao slid it in all the way to the handle. Then she pressed the plunger, delivering the full twenty-four-milliliter dose into Ethel’s stomach. It felt good to know that Ethel was finally getting some antibiotics into her system.

  “Now,” Dr. Mao said, “I want you to try it.” She filled the syringe with water from the sink and handed it to me. Her assistant was still holding Ethel. I opened her beak with one hand, but she jerked her head away and clamped her mouth shut. It’s difficult to open a chicken’s mouth when she doesn’t want it to be opened, but I finally succeeded. I wedged my thumb and forefinger in the corner of her beak to prevent her from closing it again and stuck the syringe into the opening. Ethel gagged and struggled to break free, her legs scrabbling across the stainless-steel countertop.

  I continued to push down on the syringe, frightened that I was going to hurt her. “Is that good?” I asked, ready to squirt the water.

  “You have to push the syringe all the way down to the handle,” she said. “Otherwise you can’t be sure you’ve got it in the right place.” I gently wiggled the syringe around and suddenly felt it slide effortlessly down until the entire thing was in her throat. I depressed the plunger, and all the water went into Ethel’s stomach without any coming back up.

  “Good!” said Dr. Mao. “You did it!” She was so nice and caring that I wished she could be my doctor. She took Ethel into another room, stapled the newly discovered wound, and gave her an intravenous injection of saline to rehydrate her.

  I brought Ethel back to my sister-in-law’s house and, twice a day for the next two weeks, I’d get on my bike, ride over, and squirt the medicine down the bird’s throat. The first couple of times I brought Sarina along to hold Ethel down while I administered the medicine, but I eventually figured out a way to immobilize her between my knees so I could do it without assistance. Ethel never got used to the procedure, and as she started to improve, she got better at running away when I chased her around the cage. But I was always able to catch her and give her the medicine.

  The oral antibiotics really did the trick. She started acting like the old Ethel after about four or five days, and her feathers started growing in, so she even looked like her former self. But she hadn’t resumed laying eggs. That was probably because she was still on the mend internally. It didn’t matter to me whether or not she’d ever lay eggs again. I was just happy to have her back.

  I brought Ethel to the vet one more time, to have the staples removed. I was eager to return Ethel to her flock, because she looked lonely in the dog cage by herself. I was also getting a little tired of having to go to Melissa’s every day. But the vet told me I shouldn’t put Ethel in with the other chickens yet because they might pick at her staple holes. She should be sequestered for at least a week before reintroducing her to her friends.

  AN UNWELCOME HOMECOMING

  Eight or nine days later, I put Ethel in her carrier and took her back to our house. What would the other chickens think of her after not seeing her for more than a month? Ethel had been the leader of the flock, so I hoped for the best. I opened the door to the chicken run and set the pet carrier inside. The other chickens, suspicious of the carrier, ran to the other side, eyeing it from a distance. I opened the carrier door, and Ethel tentatively stepped out. She went over to the food dispenser and began to eat. The other chickens, no longer afraid, approached her. In a few seconds they were mingling as if nothing had ever happened. But then Rosie, who had been the leader pro tempore during Ethel’s absence, lunged at her. She jumped on Ethel’s back and drove her beak between Ethel’s wings, yanking out a tuft of feathers. Ethel squawked and ran to a corner. The other hens descended on her, clucking furiously. I had to run back in and grab Ethel to rescue her. The others were supremely agitated, letting loose long, sirenlike caws that were so loud they brought Carla out to see what all the fuss was about.

  I explained what was going on, and she went back in the house to search Google for an answer. I sat on the ground and held Ethel in my lap, stroking her while the other chickens strutted around in a jerky manner. In a few minutes Carla came out. She didn’t look happy. “Why didn’t you research this first?” she said. “You’re always shooting from the hip! You’re supposed to keep Ethel separated by a fence in the run for a week so they can get used to one another. Now you’ll have to take her back to my sister’s while you make a new fence.”

  I didn’t want to make a new fence. I’d promised Carla that I would help her unpack the moving boxes that had been cluttering the house for weeks. The chickens had kept me so busy that I hadn’t been much help with getting settled in the new house. I felt like I’d spent more time with the chickens in the last six weeks than with my wife and daughters. Was this worth three or four eggs a day?

  A fence would take too much time to build. I thought about the quickest way to take care of the problem. I looked at the roll of wire mesh next to the coop. “OK,” I said. “I can divide the chicken run into two areas with this wire-mesh fence. It’ll only take ten minutes or so.” I quickly set up a separating wall inside the chicken run, securing it with cable ties. I put Ethel on her side, gave her some food and water, and placed the pet carrier in there to give her a place to sleep. The other chickens were furious with the new arrangement and ran back and forth along the new barrier looking for a way to breach it so they could peck Ethel some more. Ethel aloofly ignored the irate hens, eating and drinking from her personal food and water containers.

  Now that Ethel was safe from the other chickens, I left her alone and went into the house to help Carla unpack. I forgot about Ethel until evening, when we were ready to go to bed. I went outside with a flashlight and found her sitting on top of the pet carrier. Its door had swung shut, so she had been unable to get inside to sleep. I crawled into the pen and put Ethel in the carrier. I didn’t lock the door, thinking she might get claustrophobic if she couldn’t get out. I just swung the door closed, figuring she’d push it open in the morning.

  When I woke up the next day, I checked on Ethel and found her still in the pet carrier. I propped the door open with a stick, and she came out and started drinking water. She was parched. I decided I’d better keep the pet carrier door open at night so she wouldn’t get stuck inside again.

  That night, after putting the kids to bed, I went into the spare bedroom I used as an office to check my e-mail, and Carla went into the bedroom to read. After a few minutes she came into the office and whispered urgently, “It sounds like someone is walking around right next to the bedroom!”

  “I’ll check,” I said. Carla handed me the aluminum baseball bat we keep for self-defense, and I grabbed the flashlight I keep on my nightstand. I shined the light through the glass door and didn’t see anything, at least not at first. Then, over by the chicken coop, I saw what looked like a couple of candle lights. They flickered, went out, and then reappeared.

  “I see somethin
g!” I hissed. “Some little lights back there.” I pointed them out to Carla.

  “What are they?” she said.

  It struck me that they must be reflections from a wild animal’s eyes.

  “Oh, no!” I said. “An animal is trying to get the chickens.”

  I opened the door and kept my flashlight trained on the shining eyes. They disappeared. I walked hesitantly toward the coop. Did mountain lions live in these hills? I know they have been spotted in Los Angeles before. I felt ridiculous walking out there, barefoot with a pencil flashlight and a baseball bat in the pitch dark with no idea what kind of enemy I might be facing. I swept the light around the property and caught the shining eyes again, this time closer to the fence that separated our yard from the undeveloped canyon below. My flashlight wasn’t strong enough for me to make out what kind of animal was down there, but from the vague, roundish outline, it didn’t seem like a coyote. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a raccoon. I kept the flashlight on it, thumped the bat on the ground, and yelled for the animal to go away. The eyes disappeared.

  I turned the light to the chicken run. Ethel wasn’t in the pet carrier. She wasn’t in the pen. Then I saw the wooden stakes I’d used to hold down the wire mesh. They’d been ripped out of the ground. One of the stakes was smeared a shiny red. I saw feathers scattered next to the pen.

  “It got Ethel!” I shouted to Carla, who was standing in the bedroom doorway.

  “Oh, no!” she said. When I got back to the bedroom, she hugged me and told me how sorry she was. I suddenly felt exhausted and foolish. Everything I’d done to help Ethel get better had been a waste of time. After weeks of medical care and recuperation, a hungry predator had snatched her in a flash, and that was the end of her.

  DO I DESERVE TO KEEP CHICKENS?

  That night, Carla and I talked about our eight months with the chickens. In our old house, the hens had had the run of the yard and had been supremely happy. It was a pleasure to watch them graze, take naps on the wrought-iron table in the front yard, chase squirrels, and mingle with our cats (who pretended the chickens weren’t there). We’d never seen a coyote, and while we’d seen raccoons once in a while, they’d never bothered the chickens.

  But raising chickens here in Studio City had stopped being fun, both for us and for the chickens. During the day they were constrained to an area off to the side of the house, so we weren’t able to enjoy their presence in the way that we had when we lived in the old house. Here the wildlife was fiercer and bolder. My attempt to build a predator-free environment for them had put a strain on my family, because I’d spent so much time on it. The chickens laid eggs less frequently than before, the yolks weren’t as orange as they had been, and the hens had picked up the habit of pecking and breaking the eggs in the nest box. The fun we’d had with the chickens had been spoiled.

  While conducting my DIY experiments, I’d been telling myself that it was OK to make mistakes, but when the lives of animals, particularly ones you’ve grown fond of, are lost as a result, it’s not OK. And when DIY takes you away from your family, it defeats the purpose, at least as I’ve been defining it. DIY is supposed to be rewarding and enriching and communal, not stressful and isolating.

  Having lost two chickens, I considered what to do next. I wondered whether I even deserved to have chickens. Carla said that we had to consider the new environment we lived in and do the kinds of things that worked with it instead of fighting against it. The makeshift chicken pen I’d slapped together after the coyote attack was an example of fighting against the environment. The pen was an attempt to keep out the things that were surrounding it. Keeping chickens here would be an endless struggle, fraught with chronic, low-grade anxiety that a predator was digging its way in.

  Why not refocus on vegetable gardening, Carla suggested, and growing an orchard of exotic fruits on the hillside? She pointed out that I’d had a great time gardening the year before, and she was right. We didn’t have a large, flat area for a garden in our new house, but we had a big deck that got a lot of sunlight and would be a perfect place to put some self-watering containers.

  “We could give the chickens away to someone who has a better place for them,” said Carla. I liked the idea. It wasn’t fair to keep them here. They needed a place where they could scratch and roam freely. I called the people living in our Tarzana house and asked if they’d be interested in keeping our four remaining chickens. They said they would be happy to take them as soon as they got back from vacation a few weeks later. I told them I’d call them at that time so we could make arrangements for me to come over with the chickens and give them a few lessons on how to keep them.

  But when the end of June rolled around, I didn’t call the tenants. I just kept tending to the chickens as usual. Carla didn’t mention our plans either. I suspect neither of us really wanted to live without chickens.

  In November, we were down to two hens, having lost Rosie and Daisy in August to a predator who grabbed them when they’d escaped into a part of our yard that didn’t have a fence. The two remaining chickens, Jordan and Darla, were always the shyest of the bunch. Maybe it pays for a chicken to be fearful, with so many other animals (including humans) salivating at the sight of them. Darla has taken to spending her days in the nesting box, leaving only for a moment to eat and drink, then scurrying back to her dark cubbyhole. A visitor who keeps chickens told me that Darla is “broody.” Hens that are broody want to sit on a clutch of eggs and do little else. They make a strange growl if you get too close to them. She told me to lock Darla out of the coop. I’ve been keeping her out during the day, but at night I have to put her back in to keep the coyotes away. One Web site suggests keeping a “very active young cockerel” in the pen to cure a hen of broodiness. “He just won’t let them sit there as he’ll constantly be trying to mate them.” I don’t want a rooster, so I might try the other suggestion offered: putting some ice cubes under her while she’s nesting.

  Even though keeping chickens can be difficult and at times discouraging and frustrating, there’s something wonderful about having them around. Humans and chickens have been living with each other for ten thousand years, and it’s a bond that’s hard to break. Carla wants me to build a bigger coop, with a nicer-looking pen. I’m glad she wants to keep chickens. Raising these fascinating animals, despite all the hassles involved, is one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. Now that we have chickens in our life, we don’t want to go back to living without them.

  6

  STRUMMING AND STIRRING

  “What’s important about this making stuff is that it’s a balance to what I call ‘digeritis,’ which is having everything virtual and electronic. When you make things by hand, it’s yours; there’s no mystery how it got made. If you get an idea and you make it yourself, there’s something about that that is really good for you.”

  —JAY BALDWIN, A LONGTIME EDITOR AT WHOLE EARTH CATALOG

  Twenty-five years ago, a guitar maker from Minneapolis named Bob McNally designed a stringed musical instrument that even a rank amateur could use to make sweet-sounding music. He called it the Strumstick. With its triangular body and three strings, it resembled a small Russian balalaika. Today McNally sells Strum-sticks (generically known as stick dulcimers) on his Web site for $140. The instrument uses drone, or diatonic, tuning, in which the frets are spaced to give only the major notes of the scale. Mountain dulcimers, bagpipes, and sitars use this tuning as well. To make music with a Strumstick, all you have to do is press down on any fret along the neck and strum all three strings. The unfretted strings will accompany the fretted string with pleasing harmony. I’ve owned one for a couple of years, and it’s a hit with visitors who’ve never learned to play a guitar, because making nice sounds with the Strumstick is foolproof.

  One day in 2008 as I was strumming, I started wondering if anyone had made his own Strumstick. I looked for videos on You-Tube and found plenty of people who had made their own drone-tuned instruments. Some had used ci
gar boxes for the body, and the resulting instruments looked and sounded great. I thought this might be a fun way to make my own stick dulcimer, but the frets intimidated me. You needed to saw grooves into the neck and insert the metal frets, all at the same height and in such a way that they wouldn’t pop out. I couldn’t find any good information online about installing frets, so I put the idea aside.

  A couple of weeks later, I stumbled across a Web site that demonstrated how to make a ukulele out of a Tupperware container. It wasn’t pretty, but it sounded great. More impressive, at least to me, was how the guy made the frets for it—with flat toothpicks. He simply glued them along the neck at the proper locations with epoxy. Suddenly, the barrier to entry had been lowered enough for me to give instrument making a try. I ordered a set of ukulele tuning pegs ($8) and a set of baritone ukulele strings ($6), and when they arrived a couple of days later, I went to work.

  First, I needed some wood for the neck and body. I didn’t have a cigar box handy, but since I planned to make the instrument electric, I could use a solid piece of wood. Sifting through my scrap-lumber collection didn’t turn up anything usable, but when I examined the clubhouse my daughters had built in the backyard, I found a piece of wood attached to it, originally from a kitchen table that had broken a couple of years earlier, that looked like it might do the trick. I pried it loose. (I caught flak for it when Sarina noticed the missing piece of her clubhouse a couple of days later.)

  Using my Strumstick as a guide, I measured the length of the strings from the bridge to the nut, adding about six more inches. That way, I could make the neck and the body out of a single piece of wood, eliminating the need for fasteners and glue.

  To mark where the frets would go, I just held the Strumstick up against my piece of wood and made marks with a pencil. Then I used a jigsaw to cut the wood to size and sanded it smooth.