My Life Is a Circus

This is what happens when chickens own a soft-hearted fool

Elvis has a big mouth. This guy wakes up the sun. If I were dead in the ground, that shrill incessant tin can voice would roust and send me reaching for daisies to shove in my ears to drown him out. When he was a little squirt, I adored that sound. He was so cute and unusual. A brand new exotic thing to focus my attention on. A shiny new chicken to love.

His lady’s name is Mabel. She seems harmless and docile at first, but she’s a real pain in the ass. Mabel wanders around with a sweet, calm look on her face and doesn’t bother anyone or anything. She’ll stand there, cock her head to the side and study you with intensity like she’s truly fascinated with understanding how you tick. Then on a whim, she’ll spook and dart off across the yard, cackling like you’re the butt of her joke. And the joke, without a doubt, is on me.

I don’t own these chickens

They own me. Mabel has taken to hiding her eggs deep in the bowels of old-growth poison oak bushes, overtaking the evergreen trees bordering my yard. How does she know I’m allergic and would break out in a rash head-to-toe for three weeks if I ventured in there? I love eggs, but not that much. I cut a trail into one of her nests, and it pissed her off so much she moved her cozy spot to another tree surrounded with a twenty-foot buffer of the oily blister-provoking hell-plant. She’s smarter than she looks.

I thought it was so cute the first time they flew up and perched on the top rail above the backyard gate. Two love birds, cuddled together, facing west, watching the sunset. It was like a scene from a chicken movie love story. It was a ploy. And I’m sure it was Mabel’s idea. She knows I’m a soft-hearted fool.

The rail is ten feet high

I can’t reach it. Mabel sits up there when she doesn’t want to go home to her shanty coop to roost. I stand below waving my arms, talking in a high sharp voice, “C’mon, go home, chick, chick, go home,” as if my coaxing mattered at all. I look and sound like an idiot out there. My neighbors must think I’m insane. Mabel just looks down at me, squirts poop in my direction, and ignores my flailing. Finally, I grab a rake handle and bang it on the rail. On the most stubborn evenings, a ladder does the trick when I haul myself up it to shoo them off the fence. They fly into the backyard then run circles around the rosemary bush as I herd them into the coop.

This circus has been happening every single night for a month now. As soon as the sun goes down, that devious little bouffant-feathered fowl-minded bird does all she can to make me look like an ass. It isn’t all Mabel. Elvis pulls stunts of his own.

Yesterday my Mom called

I should tell you I moved to this sixteen-acre homestead two years ago. Mom and Dad live on one side of the land, and I live on the other with a meadow and a short line of trees between our houses.

So the phone rings, “Did you see that?” Mom sounds wound up.

“No, what?” I brace myself for a UFO sighting or something of that nature.

“Elvis came running across the meadow on the heels of a wild mama turkey with twelve babies in tow and almost caught her. He was nuts, running like the devil was on him. Mabel was barely keeping up.”

Oh my god, now Elvis is terrorizing the giant wild turkeys who come here every spring to have babies in the woods near my house.

“Did he catch the turkey?”

Mom, still sounding stunned, “No, he just ran her ragged all over the place until she escaped into the forest with the babies, then he and Mabel trotted home.”

Seriously? What the hell was he thinking?

What is he going to do if he catches a turkey that outweighs him by twenty pounds? I ran outside and saw Mabel marching home behind Elvis, dragging her tail feathers, exhausted. When they reached the safety of the front yard, Mabel yelled sharply in his face. She really let him have it, then crawled off into the forbidden poison oak forest and sulked for a few hours.

Elvis stood there alone in the yard, head darting to the left, then the right, looking forlorn and perplexed. He could not figure out why Mabel and I were scowling and walking away from him instead of puffing up his feathers with kudos for chasing the dangerous Mama Pterodactyl Turkey from our home. He was doing his job, guarding his territory and flock, keeping us safe, and now we shun him? I could almost hear his words, “Damn women.”

Around four o’clock that afternoon

After the dust settled on the turkey chase, I was sipping iced tea in a lounge chair on the deck. The big old orange cat Dude sprawled under the chair napping, birds were singing, the blue sky looked deep and clear enough to swim in. Elvis and Mabel hopped up on the edge of the deck and stood pruning feathers. A few minutes later, they walked next to the chair, laid down near the cat, and cooed to me. Yes, they actually cooed - to me.

They have this quiet chicken-speak when they are relaxed. Or if they know you’re close to doing something drastic and need to melt your heart asap. It’s the sweetest, kindest, most comforting sound I’ve ever heard an animal make. So, for now, on this day, the chickens can stay.

My life is a strange circus

Do all writers sit with creatures at their feet, sipping afternoon tea, pondering on the absurdity of it all? Do other homesteaders go through this kind of drama with free-range chickens?

Honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing. Except maybe build a better chicken coop - a condo with colorful walls and cozy nooks that Queen Mabel might approve of and lay eggs in :)

And what will that cost me? A helluva lot more than buying eggs at the store. But it’s never been about the money for me. Life is about the experience, and the circus must go on.

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© 2021 Michelle McAfee

(Photo by Author)