Rooster brains

As some of you know if you’ve been reading my blog, Mr. Wren and I keep chickens. We have five, and all of them are chubby Rhode Island Red hens. Each of The Girls produces a big, delicious brown egg with a startled cackle once a day during the laying season. They give us far more eggs than we could ever hope to eat by ourselves, so our family, friends and neighbors share in the largess. Smiles abound.

While we don’t have a rooster now, we used to. It wasn’t intentional. Mr. Wren brought six adorable, fuzzy, yellow bantam chicks home one day from the feed store, where he’d gone to buy dog food. Hey, when you live in the country, you don’t buy your dog food at the supermarket, silly. You get it from the feed store like all the other local yokels. It’s fun parkin’ next to all those pickups with the gun racks and watchin' guys in plaid flannel shirts hawk globs of ... whatever ... on the dirty plank floor as they hitch up their drawers.

Anyway, Mr. Wren was assured by the bored feed store cashier that the chicks he was buying would all grow up to be hens. He didn’t plan to raise chickens but only to feed and nurture these six little cuties, give them a nice, long, comfy life and in return, enjoy their smallish eggs for breakfast.

They were supposed to be exotic Polish Something-or-Other Chickens, which Mr. Wren chose in a fit of snickering because of the silly-looking top-knots that would grow like mops on their heads when they were mature. Also, they supposedly laid green, pink and yellow pastel-colored eggs. Every day would be like Easter except no messy dye! What a kick in the pants!

Since they were Polish, he gave them Polish-like names. He named one of the little hens, who had a malformed schnozz, “Zbeaksky.”

As time passed we discovered that these chickens weren’t the Polish ones at all, but some of the names stuck.

We also discovered that one of the Not-Polish hens was actually a rooster, after his feathers grew in and he sprouted a magnificent tail and a deep red comb and wattles. With a perfectly straight face, Mr. Wren christened him “Zcocksky.”

It would be nice if that was the end of the differences between the male and female chicken-people, but noooo. This story drags on. Like men, roosters are from Mars. While hens cluck and chatter softly to one another as they scratch around for tasty bugs, roosters crow like maniacs. For those of you who’re barnyard-challenged, understand that this ear-splitting cockadoodle-doooooing does not only take place at dawn, but throughout the daylight hours and even, if the rooster is an insomniac, after dark. Roosters crow, in fact, whenever they damn-well decide to give voice, which is frequently.

Fortunately, living out in the country as we do, having a rooster with an amazingly overdeveloped set of pipes wasn’t the liability you might expect. After a while, we hardly noticed the racket, and if we did, it was a natural racket, at least. We’d just mutter “stupid rooster” and move on. The neighbors never said a word. Really, Zcocksky was much less disturbing than, say, a police helicopter with a spotlight hovering over your neighborhood at 3 a.m., like what happens down in the ‘burbs all the time. I’ll take the crowing rooster, thanks.

And their pipes aren’t the only aspect of roosters that tend to overdevelop. The other things which set them apart from their milder-mannered sisters are their spurs and their tendency toward truly bad manners. Before he grew spurs on his legs, Zcocksky was OK to be around. I could even say his name without bursting into laughter. He’d run up and try to peck my ankles now and then when I was out working in the sunny garden, but he wasn’t very serious and it was pretty funny.

Then he grew spurs and everything changed.

Since none of the chickens except Zcocksky and Zbeaksky were actually bantams, either, but regular-sized hens of a variety of types (the chicken-man in the John Deere cap saw Mr. Wren coming), poor Zcocksky was sorta size-challenged when it came to doing his roosterly duties. But what he couldn’t do in the sack he made up for in sheer, nasty, bad-tempered aggression. He pestered the hens and chased them around, running at them with his head low and his tail up. They’d flutter and cluck and trot off, then go back to ignoring him. So he started taking his irritation out on me.

Whenever I’d go out to the garden, he’d wait in ambush around the corner of the house. As soon as I passed, he’d come tearing out from his hiding place, his chicken feet going thump-thump-thump-thump-thump on the earth behind me. Then there’d be a terrible silence as he launched himself, spurs first, at my calves.

Now, understand that rooster spurs are wicked sharp, like spikes. I’m sure Zcocksky, nursing his small-rooster rage, honed his weapons to a razor’s edge every night while we slept. The idea of having him slash and mangle my legs with those things never much appealed to me, so the second I heard that ominous thumping I’d wheel around, shout and kick him before he could score. Thank goodness for all that kick-ball practice in grade school!

Sometimes my screech and turn was enough to stop his launch in mid-air, but often his momentum was too great and no matter how madly he flapped those silly short wings, he couldn’t abort the attack. In which case he’d encounter my foot, rising rapidly off the ground to meet him.

And then off he’d soar, squawking and flapping, lofted 15 feet down the garden path like a feathery soccer ball. While he was still in the air, I’d grab a rake or a hoe or anything else that could be used as a weapon and crouch, waiting, because as soon as he touched down, Zcocksky would be up again, shaking himself and running at me in his next attack. Sometimes it took three or four Soccer-Ball-Flights before he’d give up for a while to reassess his tactics.

All this time, of course, Mr. Wren was rolling around in the foxtails, laughing his ass off. Zcocksky sometimes took it into his pin-sized head to attempt an attack on him, but Mr. Wren is huge and could have easily drop-kicked him into the next county. Hell, one of his feet was bigger than the entire rooster. So mostly, Zcocksky left him alone, even though all his hens followed Mr. Wren around like rockstar groupies, cooing with excitement.

I’m sure that just steamed that poor rooster, whose ego was already battered. So Zcocksky saved his fury up for me. Once he caught his breath and regathered his few scattered marbles, he’d set up new ambushes. I’d be wandering around the garden, relaxed finally, plucking tomatoes off the vines and relieving the zucchini plants of their baseball-bat sized squashes. As any vegetable gardener can tell you, zucchini squashes grow from neat, tender, edible hand-length tasties to baseball-bat-sized, tough and inedible nearly overnight. If you don’t get them when they’re small, they’re really only good for rooster-bashing.

So imagine: There I am, innocently cutting a huge, prickly zucchini loose when I hear the dreaded thumping behind me that indicates Zcocksky making another kamikaze charge at the back of my knees. I have mere seconds to react. Using a move I learned from Bruce Willis in Die Hard XXIII, I wrench the massive zuke loose, spin and swing – and send that idiot Zcocksky flying backwards through the sky.

There’s a sort of beauty to this.

Now, you animal lovers out there are probably gasping and shaking your heads in disgust at my obvious disregard and hatred for this small chicken. Why, he could have been hurt!

Indeed. So could I have needed stitches in my ankles, so there. We could have kept Zcocksky locked in the pen, but we felt bad confining him and depriving him of all those nice, tasty bugs that were all over the garden. Plus, catching him wasn’t an easy thing to do, as you might imagine. So it was just war. He could have stopped trying to kill me anytime. I’d have easily called a truce. I might even have given him the best tomato worms when I found them, instead of to the closest hen. I might have changed his name!

Instead, I just took to wearing jeans and boots to protect my legs and ankles, even in the hot weather, and carrying a broken broom handle whenever I went to the garden, the better to bat Zcocksky with. It was just safer all around.

Zcocksky finally met his end when he somehow – and for reasons we’ll never know – got into the dog pen while we were at work. When they were out in the garden with us, the dogs never tried to hurt the chickens. They knew the birds were off limits. The psychodog, being a herding-type, would occasionally attempt to herd the hens into a squawking, agitated group and run them back and forth across the garden (we discouraged this, as he tended to get overexcited and the hens exhausted), but Zcocksky never deigned to take part in the herding game. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the last decision he ever made was to attack the psychodog inside his pen.

And that was that.

Anyway, all this was really meant only as an analogy for how George Bush and some of the Republican presidential hopefuls are a lot like bantam roosters, fluffing themselves up, making outrageous threats, and stupidly attacking targets without thinking out the consequences first. Funny how the mind works, isn’t it.

Witchy woman

Another post about the cat. Bear with me, now – I know wherewith I’m headed.

Remember in that last post I said my healthy living was improving the symptoms of my impending cronehood?

Heh. Well, I was lying.

Okay, not exactly lying. Call it positive thinking in print, published for the world to see. A harmless fib, meant to buck myself up.

In reality, I steam up my own glasses.

Achieving full steamage doesn’t require the presence of a male person or even an imaginary male person, such as Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Hell, Russ could dance through the kitchen in his little leather skirt, flexing his oiled muscles manfully, and I’d just stand there blinking.

See, all fogging my own glasses requires is that I mind my own business – say, innocently unloading the dishwasher -- and a general air temperature of 65 or below.

Here’s how it works: I’m putting away plates and saucepans, grumbling to myself because once again, it’s me doing this chore, even though I tried to ignore it for 36 hours after the dishwasher finished its cycle hoping that magic would happen and it would empty itself. But in the end, I have to concede that I want to eat off an actual clean plate with an actual clean fork more than Mr. Wren does, so I’m doing it.

But that’s another post. I’m putting away plates when suddenly, for no good reason, my ears get hot.

I haven’t visually observed this phenomenon, so I’m guessing that they also turn bright scarlet. The feeling of intense, humid heat, generated from the inside of my skull, spreads along my temples and then slowly across my cheeks, brow, nose, mouth and chin. My eyes heat up. My scalp prickles and starts sweating. The outrageous, weird heat continues flushing down my torso, but by now I’m gasping and fanning myself with my hands, the dishes forgotten as my glasses fog up. I rip them off. I yank a wad of paper towel off the holder and blot my skin. Sweat tickles down the back of my neck. My shirt clings to my suddenly swampy skin. Given ten minutes, I could heat the whole room all on my own. It’s like a nuclear incident and it all takes place above my waist. My brains should be boiling.

And then it’s over – that fast – and I’m standing next to the dishwasher shivering because, you know, it’s November, it’s 58 degrees in the kitchen and I’m not in Biloxi in June after all.

For the most part, I’m spared these hot flashes (or “power surges”, as some snarky and wishful woman named them) during the daytime. They happen only three or four times between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. The swamp fever hits, perversely, with the most frequency after I’ve gone to bed for the night.

The power surges mean I need to have a window wide open and a fan blowing directly on me all night long. To this end, I’ve taken to bedding down in the guest room to spare Mr. Wren the discomfort of trying to sleep in a room kept colder than a windy meat locker. He shivered faithfully through most of the last winter with me, but eventually it got too cold for him and he begged me to shut the window and turn off the fan. I was unmovable. I couldn’t do it. I’d have drowned in my own juices after cooking in them. Mr. Wren was understanding, but the cold wasn’t doing his osteoarthritis any good. So I finally took pity on him and banished myself.

You were wondering where the cat fit into this story, weren’t you. Well, let me assure you that Catboy PiB is delighted. The Psychodog, who long ago made it his serious job to guard the door to the Mawster’s Chambers every night, would never allow the damned cat to pass, and PiB was smart enough not to attempt to brave the Jaws of Doom. But since the Dog can’t guard two doors at the same time, PiB sneaks in with me each night.

And baby, it’s cold in my little room. The window is wide open. A fan sits in front of it, blowing fresh, late-Autumn-chilled air directly across the bed. I curl up beneath layers of coverings – a sheet, a blanket, a thin quilt and a thick, warm comforter that I brought home from Germany with me. I’m as cozy as a mouse in a matchbox. Once I’m settled, PiB likes to assume the meatloaf position on top of the covers, balanced on my hip or, if he’s feeling lazy, in the crook of my legs.

And thus do we fall asleep, both of us snoring gently. All I need is a little flannel kerchief and the picture of comfort and coziness would be complete.

But within two hours, tops, I’m suddenly and completely awake, clawing off the covers, twisting and snarling, a lump of sweating dynamite about to blow. At first, this sudden wild activity would send PiB leaping to safety, but he’s learned to cope. Now when I fight my way out from beneath all those covers, sputtering with fury and radiating nuclear fallout, he simply rides the waves, neatly stepping over rumpling blankets, ducking from beneath tossed comforters and walking my rolling body the way a lumberjack rolls a floating log with his feet while keeping his balance and remaining upright. It’s actually sort of amazing. He never leaves the bed.

I come within seconds of detonation and lay exposed and gasping in the wind of the fan, sucking the fresh air like draughts of icy water. Then my inner thermostat switches off and I’m flipping the appropriate heat-level of covers back over myself, damp, shivering and desperate to get back to that warm, cozy-mouse spot where I can sleep, deep and dreamlessly, until morning. After a few minutes of kneading, purring and walking all over me, PiB resumes his perch somewhere on my prone form and all is quiet until the next session.

This happens over and over again, all night long.

It’s been getting a lot colder overnight lately, dipping down into the 30s just before dawn. PiB has taken to perching himself on the few parts of me that aren’t covered in six inches of blanket, like my neck. Or my face. Or both.

I think he does this because those spots are where he can take advantage of my radiating 98.6 body temperature most efficiently. Smart cat. But he doesn’t realize that flopping his entire 12-pound weight on, say, my throat, might just make it hard for me to breathe. So a small battle of wills ensues. I wake up boiling over. Covers fly. PiB log-rolls. I huff and cool down after a while, get cold, and pull the blankets back up. Mumbling curses, I snuggle back down and try to find sleep again. PiB, in the meantime, starts kneading my collarbone, careful not to use his claws. He moves on to my throat. Then my jaw. He purrs sweet nothings into my ear. Then flumph, he’s meatloafed, his butt stuck into the space between my neck and my shoulder, his chin on my heart. Twelve pounds turns to twenty. As long as I can still breathe, we’re both good to go. If I can’t, I shove him off and he has to start over. He’s very persistent.

The cat-on-face maneuver is annoying but endearing. He could abandon me – after all, there’s a nice warm fire blazing in the stove in the living room all night, and he could certainly curl up on the sofa nearby and be quite comfortable. Instead, he stays with me, enduring the cold, my tossing and turning, and trying to get as close to me as he can. He shares his warmth with me when I need it, and just rolls with the punches when I don't. I’m charmed by his loyalty.

And so we wake up together each morning, PiB and me, a little bleary-eyed the both of us but more or less ready to take on the day, involuntary, instantaneous tropical moments notwithstanding.

For the record: The healthy regimen really did seem to be helping with the menopausal symptoms for a while. I wasn’t suffering hot flashes nearly as often in the daytime or at night. But it seems they’re cyclical, so there’s nothing much I can do but keep on keeping on and looking forward to the day when they end.

I’ve been thinking a lot about mindfulness lately. I'm truly glad I've been blessed with such a goofy, furry, patient little partner in this inexorable, shifting phase of life. Menopause is a process that, for most of my life, women didn't talk about much. That's changing some now, and I think it's a good thing, particularly if we can talk about it with both reverence and humor. The Change is staggering in its finality: it's the last mountain to climb and summit before descending into feminine old age. Male people experience nothing like it, however, and frankly, I don't think even tough ol' Russell Gladiator could take it.

And now I know why people once thought older women were witches and their cats “familiars.” I can be downright witchy these days -- it actually feels good after years of keeping my mouth shut on my irritation with people. PiB is my faithful little friend, guiding me calmly through the undergrowth and making me laugh when I'm at my lowest. There we are at 3:30 a.m., lost in the dark, stuck on the cusp between simmer and flash-freeze, chortling, cussing, and purring.

Thanksgiving meme, a little late

My friend Max has tagged me with a Thanksgiving meme. I like Max. Max makes me smile. Max makes me think. So I’m taking up Max’s challenge.

It just so happens that I wrote about twenty “things to be thankful for” for publication in the November issue of a slick local fluff magazine, so I’m well prepared for this. For that article, which focused on things to be thankful for in this part of the Sierra foothills, I mentioned long walks, hot soup, glorious coffee, apple pie and rain on the roof (along with where to walk and what local establishments to visit in order to find the soup, the coffee, and the apple pie).

We’re still waiting for the rain. Today there’s a dense, low, unbroken layer of gravid gray clouds, but there’s no rain forecast. I hope as the clouds move eastward, some lucky folks on the other side of the Sierras might just hear rain drumming on their rooftops before too long. With so much of the nation either facing or enduring serious drought, I’m thankful for rain wherever it falls.

And for today, I’m thankful for the gray. I know that sounds funny to sun-worshippers, but I’m not one of you. It’s sunny and warm (or hot) here almost all year ‘round. When the clouds come in and cut the glare, I’m thankful.

Okay, that’s two thankful things, Max. I’ll just count it as one, though, since the clouds, gray skies and rain are a theme by themselves.

Here’s another thing I’m thankful for: my friend PiB, which is short for Puss in Boots. Twelve years ago he turned up at our little hovel in the oak woodlands just outside Placerville, a skinny, pitiful, mostly feral black-and-white Sylvester kitten with a pink nose, golden eyes and four white feet. I like cats but prefer dogs, so he’d have remained feral if it had been up to me. Mr. Wren, however, was enamored of him and started coaxing him closer with promises of kitten food and gentle strokes. Within a week, PiB had his name and a permanent home. He rewarded us with the peculiar loyalty and affection of the Standoffish Feline Kind for many years, preferring to stay outside and rule his territory as a small, neutered but mighty tom, all scrappy claws and teeth. He always had scabs on his head and frequently brought us freshly-killed birds and lizards, laid with pride on the mat in front of the door. Once he snatched a low-flying little brown bat right out of the air, right before our eyes. We yelled at PiB, he dropped the bat, and it flew away while he licked a paw in nonchalant disgust. Incredible.

And then three years ago, on Christmas Day, he crept inside, subdued and looking unwell. We found a terrible, swollen and leaking abscess on his belly, caused by a puncture wound he’d received while mixing it up with another critter – cat, dog, coyote, raccoon, we never knew. It was dicey for a while, but PiB lived through the injury, saved by about $1000 to the local veterinarian and three weeks worth of daily medication pushed gingerly down his throat and a twice-daily wound-flushing, carried out by yours truly and the Fledgling while holding the furious but resigned PiB, shaved pink belly up, over the kitchen sink.

Amazingly, we lost only a little skin during the ordeal. He seemed to understand that while the flushing was grossly undignified and very painful, it was beneficial. He ‘d hide for hours afterwards, but each time, when he finally stuck his nose out again, we were forgiven. What a cat.

For his own good (and that of my bank account) PiB was forced to become an Indoor Cat after that. The first two years he was constantly trying to sneak out the door whenever it opened, but he’s used to the cushy life now. He rarely makes a break for it. And to my delight, he’s turned into a lap cat and one of the best furry friends I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. He’s always near and he seems to like being held as much as I like holding him. Mr. Wren may be the one who first enticed him to stick around, but it’s me PiB sticks close to now. I'm charmed.

I’m thankful for good health. I always thought that was an “old fart” thing to say, and I guess it is, but I understand and appreciate why they say it now that it’s clear I am not immortal like I thought I was when I was younger. My personal stage of “old fartdom” has arrived. To hold further deterioration at bay, I continue to walk – I’m averaging about 15 miles a week with a goal of more as I build up endurance and speed – and I’ve managed to stay off the cigarettes (seven months!) and stick to a very healthy diet. I feel good. Although I have rheumatoid arthritis, with the exception of an occasional twinge here or there, it remains quiet and doesn’t trouble me. And I think the exercise, the healing lungs and the good food have combined to make the symptoms of menopause, which I’ve been struggling to deal with without resorting to medication, much less annoying.

Two more. I’m thankful for family – Mr. Wren, my daughter and her boyfriend, my mother and sister, my aunt, her son and his wife, their new baby, and my other cousins and half-cousins, with whom I reunited recently over the passing of another aunt and uncle. We’re both a smaller family than we were a couple of years ago and a larger one in new ways. We’re stronger, sadder, maybe a little wiser, flung out further away in distance but not in spirit. It’s been a revelation, rediscovering the tough but gossamer threads that link us.

Finally, I’m thankful for the comforts of home – and for all these other things: For the roof over my head, for plenty to eat, for the soft bed in which I sleep, and for the time I’ve been given for contemplation and decision-making. I’m thankful for time to write, for time to sweep the walks, and for the gentle life I lead, knowing that it could all change tomorrow. I’m thankful that I’m aware and mindful, at least as much as I’m able to be, and most of all, I’m thankful to be alive, right here and right now.

Happy Day After Turkey Day! Recovery is ongoing.

The celebration of family, good food and good friends was here at the Wren's Nest for the first time this year. I roasted and mixed and cuisinarted all morning, then uncorked a bottle of wine at noon and managed -- three generous glasses of cold white plonk later -- to get everything on the table piping hot.

I had help. Three generations of females -- family and friends -- crowded into my wee kitchen and chopped apples, sliced cheese and salami, and tossed salads. In the end, the feast itself was the only organized part of the day, but we all had a lot fun.

Mr. Wren contributed sprays of maple leaves for vases, bringing Autumn indoors for us. The woodstove blazed and soon had us opening all the windows and fanning ourselves. DVDs of "The Matrix" made up the background noise. We had lots of people here, lots of laughter and lots of love. What more can you ask from life than this?

Well, OK. Now that it's over, a foot massage?

Essay on November

There is at times a small fire
In the brain, partita for violin,
Brier, black stem,
All burning in the quarter notes.
And the hedgerow
Beyond the barn
Calls its starlings in.
Then frost, sere leaves,
A swollen half-moon
Like a drowsy fingertip
Above the apple trees.

--Steven Kuusisto
"Only Bread, Only Light"

Another love bites the dust ...

They're putting teevees in Borders.

Yeah, that Borders. The giant chain bookstore. I go there occasionally because I love bookstores. The smell of all that paper and ink just does it for me. I love the variety of books in the stacks, and it delights me, all that soaring (and occasionally thudding) human thought gathered into one place, printed and presented so that anyone can read it. I love the idea that I can open a book and step into a new world, and that each time I read a book I forever change my perception of the world and how I react to it.

Since Borders and Amazon.com ate up all the little local booksellers, Borders is the only brick-and-mortar bookstore I go to these days. I sometimes spend more than I ought to there, but I don't love Borders and I don't go often.

The news that Borders is putting big, wide-screen TVs in their stores forever kills my love of bookstores. They've made sure that I'll never walk through their doors again. The very thought of a television blaring in a bookstore gives me a headache. I don't like TV. I stopped sitting in front of the tube, eyes glassy and mouth hanging open, years ago. I can't stand watching it.

And now it will be in bookstores, one of the last sacred places. As I peruse fiction stacks, the blathering talking heads will be yammering on. As I skim through pricey magazines, debating whether $12 is too much to spend on something that's mostly fashion ads, TV commercials frantically selling me cars and designer drugs ("ask your doctor about how Snake Oil can help you!") will form my auditory background.

You know, I don't go to the bookstore for lattes. I don't go to buy music. I'm not particularly interested in overpriced book lights that go through batteries like kids through their Halloween candy, and my "boughten" bookmarks last for decades. The fact is, I go to the bookstore for the books. I go to have my imagination awakened. I go out of curiosity, out of a longing for discovery and adventure.

I don't want a television blaring at me while I look for a good book to read by the fire while it rains outside.

I don't get the same satisfaction from buying my books online as I do from buying them from a bookseller. I like holding the book in my hands, reading snippets to find out if I like the writer's style, or how good (or bad) the writing is. I like being able to put the book back on the shelf and look for one that appeals more if it doesn't meet my personal standards. I like feeling the book's heft in my hands, and savoring the quality of the printing and the paper before I open my wallet.

But I'll just have to adjust. With the installation of televisions, my love affair with bookstores has ended once and for all. It's like finding out after the wedding that your Prince Charming farts at the dinner table and neglected to mention his under-the-bed mushroom farm.

Lance said it best, I think: "When I want to be forced to watch television, I'll go to the grocery store."

Thank you, veterans.

Echoing light ...

When I was beginning to read I imagined
that bridges had something to do with birds
and with what seemed to be cages but I knew
that they were not cages it must have been autumn
with the dusty light flashing from the streetcar wires
and those orange places on fire in the pictures
and now indeed it is autumn the clear
days not far from the sea with a small wind nosing
over dry grass that yesterday was green
the empty corn standing trembling and a down
of ghost flowers veiling the ignored fields
and everywhere the colors I cannot take
my eyes from all of them red even the wide streams
red it is the season of migrants
flying at night feeling the turning earth
beneath them and I woke in the city hearing
the call notes of the plover then again and
again before I slept and here far downriver
flocking together echoing close to the shore
the longest bridges have opened their slender wings

-W.S. Merwin

You want change? Vote.

I was surprised that 20 million women haven't exercised their right to vote. Twenty million. Ladies, we need to change that.
Register. Inform yourself. Vote. Make change happen.

The trouble with torture

Oh, do take a few minutes to see this:


Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART

and then, this:


Animator vs. Animation II by *alanbecker on deviantART

Art is always relevant. Art makes the point. Animator Alan Becker gets it.