Mangos from Heaven

The new house was situated under a mango tree that was having a rather good season evidenced by the continual bam, splat, fruit war sounds coming from the roof. John couldn't bear all that food becoming useless mush and climbed up on the roof everyday with a pole picker trying to save them from going gooshey and also to insure that we would enjoy tropical smoothies for the rest of the summer. Mmmmmmmmm…

He also dug and planted a small temporary lettuce/arugula patch to sustain us until the heavy work could be completed and the real garden could go in. We were eating from it's bounty in two weeks! As they say about Hawaii, plant and stand back with a hatchet…

Chickendad

I'd always called jokingly called John "Chickendad" and now that we had this place, he immediately planned our new family by heading over to the local hatchery and ordering 6 Highlines, 6 Ameraucanas (hybrids of Araurcanas), 6 Cornish (meat birds), a quail and a pheasant, the latter two to indulge my visual sensibilities and substitute for my lost roosters. They would arrive in 6 weeks so he was driven to get their home built.

It never would have gotten done if John wasn't the most ambitious, brute strength, tenacious procurer of foodstuffs ever born. His entire existence is centered on keeping the fridge stuffed. He pawed the earth, licked his chops, rubbed his hands together till they started smoking and got down to business.

From a strictly visual standpoint, I've always enjoyed the results of John's 3X a week weight lifting habit and now his commitment to lifting was about to pay off big time. Even though he was very well equipped to deal with this project, it turned out to be no small job even for a guy who lifts pianos for entertainment. There was 20 years worth of old rotting construction materials symbiotically lashed together with 20 years of prolific vine growth. Within that tangled mess he extricated a bath tub, a hot tub, a tombstone, a generation of kid's toys, a brigade of really cool flat sided red buckets, tires and even uncovered an old street sweeper!! No kidding.

Eggstatic

After looking at many disappointing, overpriced apartments and hot, dingy little houses on busy streets our collective karma (John's, mine, our dog Licky and John's son Shaun, the basketball guy and Licky's best friend) kicked in and we found the most magical little house by a dry stream with a very large yard. Room enough (with the landlord's permission) to have a garden!! And keep Licky! And chickens, just hens, no roosters! Every one was happy.

The price? We'd have to clear the surrounds to make it happen. John immediately got to work preparing the way while I tried to get over losing my chickens by writing this story and mooning over my thousands of chicken pictures & the memories I carried of our Moa family. I'd spent the last 6 months totally immersed in a series of Moa paintings and had studied them intimately everyday…their life was my life. Gosh, I wondered if they missed Seedmother like I missed them, they were always waiting on the front steps when I came out in the morning…Sigh…

The paintings were all gone to the gallery and I was alone.

We left our Gallus gallus behind but I needed to focus on starting a new little family with G. gallus domesticus. Cheer up Seedmother, new chicks were coming but much had to be done first.

Separating Eggs

We had to move. It was a disaster, what about the chickens?

That I had bonded with them in reality, probably mattered less to them (except for the seeds) than to me. They were, after all, wild chickens who belonged to the forest. But I was tortured nevertheless over being separated from them. I thought of capturing Sola and the chicks and bringing them along but as John pointed out, it would be so unfair to them.

What about Rusty? Well, he would stay and help protect Sola, besides the forest was full of food, they really didn't need to depend on our largess at all to survive. And our new neighbors whoever they turned out to be certainly wouldn't appreciate him. I tossed and turned every night.

What about the chicks? Well, they were getting to be teenagers, less than a month away from emancipation, think of how they've grown. Their flight feathers were in, and they were roosting up in the guava trees at night. They were well past the mongoose vulnerability stage. In fact, they were so able to take care of themselves they were stealing cat food from the old cat on the property, she was scared to death of them.


This would be really hard, logic demanded that I had to let go of chicken life. But my heart & mind were scrambled.

The Ladies' Grey

They were the duchesses of the yard. They stayed together most of the time and would behave just like the proverbial cackling old dowagers. They formed the core of hen society and were the conduit of most of the underlying political gossip around the yard. The roosters protected them so they could enjoy the status and privilege they somehow granted. I think they must have had somebody's secret.

Lucy, the Redhead

She was a redhead and she reminded me of Lucille Ball with her glamorous and kinda ditzy comedic demeanor. For a while, everyday she would lay an egg in the mailbox then in the afternoon when I brought out seeds she would absent mindedly forget her duty and come out to peck. That would allow me to harvest her egg. She never seemed to catch on, she would hop back up and cock her head to one side as if to say, "now, where did that egg go?"

Red & White

Some of our chickens turned out to have this beautiful coloration. Some gene combination caused it but only in the roosters, I never saw a hen painted like this. Probably an alliance between the red jungle fowl and a domestic white variety that wandered off into the forest for some adventure.

Our two were Irving and Gimpy. They were similar in appearance but their personalities couldn't have been more different. Gimpy, so named, because a fight with Henry left him lame. He was a cranky old man with a bad attitude and very aggressive.

Irving was originally Ivory as she was pure white as a chick. We changed it to Irving when it became obvious the she was a he. The alternative name was Freckles, which I vetoed. Irving was a very sweet, gentle type. Rusty ran him off early on so he could have Sola to himself and Irving seemed to accept the periphery of the flock as his place. I always made sure he got seeds though, because he just didn't want to fight and after all, I was the great Seedmother and he was my child.