My Million-Dollar Donkey

by East, Ginny;

Each cage contained a unique breed, all of which would grow up to have significantly different traits. I put on my glasses to get a better look at the pictures taped to the cages. Did I want the fat, traditional sort of hen with feathered feet, or the leaner chickens with afro head feathers and other fancy details? I knew I wanted chickens that were prolific egg layers and maybe a rooster with hearty vocal chords to wake me with a song, but beyond that, I didn’t have much preference when it came to poultry.

  The owner of the shop, Linda, was a remarkable source of livestock knowledge. She explained that all the females would lay eggs and all the males would crow, so my paltry poultry requirements wouldn’t narrow the selection process at all. Some cages contained pre-sexed chicks, but others offered general run chicks, which meant their sex would be revealed as they matured. I could save fifty cents a bird by trusting the luck of the draw.

  “You want brown eggs, white eggs, or green?” Linda asked, bending over to blow a little kiss to the pet chicken mascot that sat on the counter to greet and entertain customers. Her pet chicken wore a tiny red bow in her silky feathers. A class act, that chicken.

  “Green? As in green eggs and ham?”

  “Green, as in they aren’t white or brown. You won’t have to waste time coloring them for Easter, if that counts for anything. If you want big eggs, pick a Leghorn; if you don’t mind smaller eggs, go with a Hatch Claret. They’re survivors so you won’t have to worry so much about predators.”

  “I don’t see predators as being a problem. I just want good, natural eggs. Like the ones in the grocery store.”

  “The eggs you get from these girls will not be like those at the grocery store,” she said, offended by my comparison. “Homegrown eggs provide better nutrition. They make your baked goods rise 30% more. You’ll see. My advice is to pick the chickens you want, rather than thinking about egg color. You want sitters?”

  “I don’t know. Do I?”

  “Sitters will get broody and hatch out eggs for you, but remember, they won’t lay for a term when they sit, and they’re slower, thus easier for a predator to pick off.”

  Again, with the predator comment. The woman must be paranoid.

  “Chickens with feathered feet are generally good sitters. The barelegged chickens will lay, but their natural instincts have been bred out of them so they won’t sit on a nest. In other words, they’ll never reproduce on their own.”

  “Where does the next generation come from then?”

  “An incubator, of course. Science breeds the perfect chicken to meet our needs now. The hens that do their work diligently and produce well have no instinct to be mothers.”

  “That describes some of my friends.”

  Linda laughed. “You have kids?”

  “Three.”

  “Well, kids love chickens no matter what kind you pick.”

  She wasn’t wrong about that. When I picked Neva up from school and brought her back to pick out whatever chicks struck her fancy you’d think I had offered her the world. We lingered in the feed store a long time, marveling at the selection of ducks, chicks, bunnies and turkeys. An hour later we were driving home with a dozen peeping birds in a cardboard box and gleefully picking a fitting name for each bird. I suggested Cacciatore, Gumbo, and Fricassee, but she insisted on names like Rainbow, Princess, and Fluffy. Her impish smile and the gentle way she stroked the birds filled my heart with tenderness. I loved these simple moments with my children. Couldn’t get enough of them.

  I also bought a cage, a feed trough, a bag of chick starter feed, a water bottle, a clip-on light fixture and a package of light bulbs. My savings calculation in regards to home egg production was a bit off, I realized, as I stuffed the receipt into my handbag.

  We set up the chickens in a heated cage when we got home, the little puffballs orienting themselves to their new environment with nary a glitch. For several weeks, the birds squeaked away in the corner of our cabin under the endless glow of the warming light. Neva spent hours gently holding the babies, talking to them and trying to teach them tricks. It was chicken nirvana, until one day we heard a squeak and our cat trotted by with a helpless, fluttering Silky chick in his mouth. The cat had stuck his paw between the bars of the cage and pulled the baby through like a kid sliding a cookie out of a bag. We ran after him shouting and throwing things, startling him enough to drop the chick, but it was too late.

  I repositioned the cage on a high dresser and covered it with a towel so the cat couldn’t strike again. Meanwhile, Neva spent the afternoon coloring a cardboard gravestone with the words: Here lies Silky, little chick.

  We held a solemn funeral ceremony, complete with song, tears, and words of apology to the chicken gods. I wanted to treat the moment with the serious respect my little girl believed it deserved, but her sensitivity was so darn cute I just wanted to abscond her homemade gravestone to keep in a scrapbook for years to come. I avoided Mark’s eyes to keep from laughing and settled with storing the memory in my mind for all time.

  “When Linda said I had to watch for predators, it never occurred to me that predators included our household cat,” I said to Mark that night.

  “It’s just that the chicks are so little. When they get bigger, taking care of them will be easier,” he said, with as much confidence in his chicken expertise as Colonel Sanders.

  The chicks did get bigger and soon started fluttering about the cage, burrowing into the shavings, and knocking over the food bowl. Nothing I did could contain the flying debris that littered the floor and left a film of dust on every piece of furniture in the room.

  “These chickens have got to go!” Mark complained, distracted from his building magazines one night when the birds wouldn’t stop their endless cackling.

  The chicks had feathered out, which meant they looked more like chickens than furry Twinkies with feet now, so they were old enough to survive without a constant light bulb for warmth. I moved the cage out to the porch and bought a second cage, second feed trough, second water bottle, and more shavings so the bigger birds had more room to move around. Still, five or six adolescent chickens in each cage made a daunting mess. Our porch looked like a giant hamster cage. Smelled like one, too.

  “These birds will be free ranging on our land soon enough,” I said to Mark as I swept the porch for the third time that day while everyone else was getting ready for the family’s big night out at the drive-in. “Once this stage is over, we’ll have maintenance-free chickens forevermore.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Mark said, slipping on a pile of slick chicken poop as he brought blankets and a bag of snacks to the car.

  The movie playing at the drive-in that night was Chicken Little. All five of us huddled in the car sharing buckets of popcorn and Twizzlers. I had wonderful memories of going to the drive-in with my family when I was a kid, so every time we went I imagined we were forging memories that would last forevermore. The movie itself was but an afterthought. It was the togetherness I loved.

  Two hours later we came home to find the dogs had knocked over one of the cages and apparently decided young chickens would make fun chew toys. The porch was a war zone of feathers and deceased chickens. Another funeral ensued. We were down to only five chickens from our original dozen now.

  “It never occurred to me predators might include the cat and the family puppy,” I mumbled, thinking Linda should have been more specific. Or perhaps I should have asked more questions.

  Even five chickens were too many for a porch once the birds grew to be full size. For their own good and for my housekeeping sanity, these chickens had to go. But, where? I had planned on free-range chickens roaming our land, waking us every morning with a joyful crow and eggs to start the day, but our house wasn’t yet finished. Then again, the donkey, horses and goat had taken up residence on our land already, so why not move the chickens out there as well? They could wander freely among the tall blades of gras
s, scratching and foraging just like the chickens at the post office and in yards all over town. I’d even set them up a nice box for shelter with food and water at the ready, and they’d be far happier living free and easy rather than trapped in a cage on our porch.

  Mark agreed it was a good idea, so the next day, we brought the chickens to our land and set them free. The birds immediately scurried into the pasture to scratch amidst the horse dung. If it wasn’t so darned corny, I’d have burst out in a rendition of “Born Free.” I watched them revel in the sunshine for an hour or more until it was time to go.

  “What if they’re scared of the dark?” Neva asked as we left.

  “Chickens have survived the dark for thousands of years. They won’t mind,” I said. “Besides which, they’ll sleep in the little box I’ve set up. Tomorrow they’ll probably be perched on the fence, waiting to be fed right along with the donkey.”

  Only the next day when we visited the land again, nary a feather was in sight.

  “Do you think they ran away?” Neva asked.

  “Perhaps they’re hiding in the trees,” I said, squinting as I looked into the branches overhead. No chickens.

  We spent a good hour calling out to them, but in the end, concluded that those ungrateful chickens had indeed run away.

  “I guess my chickens took off,” I said to Ronnie when I stopped by to see the progress on the house later that day.

  Mark looked away uneasily.

  Ronnie dug his hands into his pockets and grinned. “You just let a bunch of chickens loose out here? At night? Without a chicken coop for shelter?”

  “A chicken coop? Um... I did put a box up in a tree limb for them to sleep in.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners. “I hate to tell you, but all you done last night was feed the coyotes and possums. I’m sure they appreciated it.”

  “No sir! You really think something ate my chickens?”

  “Probably a weasel or a raccoon. Maybe it was a hawk or owl. Might be a stray dog or two. Could be a fox, of course. Just about everything eats chicken, ‘cept maybe that donkey of yours.”

  “Cats and dogs like chickens, too,” Mark said with a grin.

  It occurred to me the list of potential killers was getting mighty long and I might as well add myself to it, considering my stupidity. “But what about all those free range chickens I see wandering around at the post office and in people’s yards? Those birds somehow survive.”

  “Those chickens only free range during the day. They get tucked away at night in a chicken coop so they don’t become sitting ducks.” “Oh.”

  Not much in the mood for more funerals, I decided to stick with the they ran away story for Neva and I suggested she pick out a few more chicks at the feed store. This time, we’d build a chicken coop before setting them free. Since young girls are far more enamored with chicks than with adult chickens, Neva didn’t mind starting over. Another dozen chicks took up residency in our family room. They too moved to the porch a month later. They too made a debilitating mess that made everyone feel as if we were living in a barn and they too drove Mark to eventually put his foot down and order a chicken removal.

  “If you want me to install them on the land, I’ll need a chicken coop,” I said. “Can you pause a few hours from building the house and make me one?”

  “No way. I’m busy. You should have thought about that before you began the experiment.”

  I had come prepared for his answer. I pointed to an ad in the local paper that read, Local carpenter and handyman. No job too big or small. “Why don’t we hire this guy to build us a little chicken house?” I opened a book on small animal housing to a page featuring a basic chicken coop and held it up so Mark could stare at the plans.

  Mark flipped a few pages, nodding at the nifty animal housing options in the book. “Okay. But I want to talk to the guy and make the arrangements myself.”

  Delighted, I set up a meeting. The handyman, Erick, met us the next day and we gave him the plans. The picture of my coveted chicken coop was simple, just a little shed with a door and a cartoon drawing of a little chicken going into a small, square hole, like a doggy door. I told Erick not to bother with the inside of the coop, because I had ordered ready-made chicken nesting boxes.

  Mark arranged for Erick to go shopping for the materials that afternoon so the project could get underway the very next day. A few hours later Erick called Mark, asking if he could drop by the receipt for reimbursement. The materials bill came to $1,600.00.

  Mark called me. “What did you ask him to build? We could fly to Europe and order an omelet for what our eggs are going to end up costing us!”

  “I showed you the plans in advance. It was just a little shed with a little chicken dancing by the door. How was I to know wood cost so much?”

  “I buy wood all the time and it doesn’t cost that much!” Mark yelled.

  I winced, thinking the grand total would be even more when labor was included. According to the book, we would need to erect a fence around the coop as well. How was I going to spring that one on Mark?

  “I’m sorry, but something just doesn’t seem right. I really thought a coop thrown together by a handyman would be more in the range of $400. Just how big was that chicken coop, anyway? Did you notice?” I said.

  Mark paused. “I’ll call you back.”

  Turns out the plans in the book were for a chicken house that could easily house 200 chickens. I had under a dozen birds. Oops.

  “I didn’t pay attention to dimensions when you showed me the plans,” Mark said sheepishly. “So, I told him to make it smaller, but this chicken house is still going to cost us about four grand by the time he adds his labor. You better really like harvesting your own eggs, ‘cause it’ll take about thirty years to make this project cost-effective.”

  “Not everything in life has to add up on a balance sheet. Raising chickens will be a learning experience, and perhaps I’ll use the coop for other things as well. Like raising a turkey.”

  “To eat?”

  “I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Then no turkeys. I hereby declare that you can only raise what you are willing to eat. I hear turkeys are smelly and dumb, anyway.”

  “OK, no turkeys. I wouldn’t want dumb poultry hanging around.”

  I vaguely wondered what birds I could keep that my husband wouldn’t expect me to eat because my animal husbandry experiments were the only thing filling my days while the kids were at school and he was devoting our wildly amazing newfound freedom and resources to his own personal interest of building. The animals weren’t simply a hobby. They were my lifeline.

  “Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  THE GIFT

  I once thought New York was the Santa capitol of the world. Every December in the city Santas rang bells in front of Salvation Army collection pots on every street corner. I’d throw in a few quarters as I passed, smiling and wondering, Are you the real one? Sometimes these Santas had dark skin, bushy eyebrows, or the wrong colored eyes. They might be abnormally short or tall. They might even be women, young yuppie types, elderly, or just a guy lacking “jolly-ness.” I wasn’t fooled a bit.

  As Christmas came to Blue Ridge, I noticed men who looked like Santas everywhere, and not one of them wore a red suit or rang a bell. Here, a Santa went about his day like everyone else, with a twinkle in his eye and his bushy, white beard ungroomed. Often, he wore overalls over a Henley shirt and well-worn work boots. I even saw Santa at the hardware store one day. He was loading his truck with two-by-fours. As I passed, he nodded and winked.

  One morning, I spotted two Santas having breakfast at the Waffle House. Their round stomachs filled the booth, leaving little room for expansion after they finished off their plates of
biscuits and gravy. White hair and beards covered the collars of their flannel plaid shirts. One wore a John Deere baseball cap. They were talking about how the endless rain was making a mess around their barn. Must be tough on the reindeer, I thought.

  Blue Ridge also had a few Good Samaritan Santas decked out in red velvet. Santas passed out gifts at the bank or made an appearance at fundraisers. A traditional Santa rode the train to the Light Up Blue Ridge ceremony every season. He would sit in a decorated gazebo in the park to take pictures with the kids. Mrs. Claus handed out peppermint sticks by his side. I enjoyed the festivities, but my eyes couldn’t resist slipping to the crowd where, it seemed to me, more authentic Santas lingered, the kind with a bit of chew in their cheeks and mud on the hems of their work-worn jeans.

  In the country, commerce didn’t drive Christmas so much and people were not too frazzled to pause for a cup of homemade eggnog. The holidays were as wholesome and natural as the holly growing in the woods outside our cabin door. For the first time in as long as I could remember, Christmas was not a flurry of malls and boutiques. I didn’t spend evenings reading about Christmas traditions in Martha Stewart Magazine. Instead, I had the time and inspiration to actually dabble in wholesome holiday projects. I sent Christmas cards to friends who hadn’t heard from me in years and made baskets of goodies for my neighbors. I spent an evening with the kids stringing popcorn and cranberries to go with ornaments made of bagels and birdseed, and decorated a tree outside for the wildlife. I cooked homemade dog biscuits with my daughter and mixed up a batch of horse cookies and placed them in festive containers. We watched It’s a Wonderful Life in front of a roaring fire while I crocheted my husband a homemade scarf.

  But although our country Christmas was not focused on presents, I was excited to buy one special gift because the holiday provided me with the perfect excuse to buy Kathy something useful without the gift seeming like charity. The problem was, what? Kathy could use a new coat, but perhaps that was too personal? A gift certificate to the grocery store would be nice, but maybe that would seem like a handout.