We eat a lot of chicken. But somehow, I'm able emotionally to avoid connecting the nuggets with the gals out back. Don't get me wrong. Having chickens has increased my sympathy for battery chickens. It's not right to fatten up an animal so that it can't walk, and to keep it penned up even if it could walk, so that it spends its entire life in a tiny dark cube. I remember how unhappy the girls out back were last winter, when the cold and snow were so relentless.
For a while this summer, one of our hens was escaping every day. Yes, she was born a rambling hen. She'd fly the coop, scout around for a hidden spot to lay her eggs, and spend the rest of the day keeping our next-door-neighbor, Ben, company while he built his new front porch. Once, we got an unsigned note, presumably from a neighbor, asking us to keep our chickens out of their garden. Another time, a couple of college girls captured her and brought her back home. When Rich would arrive home from work, she'd come rushing up to greet him, and then squat down so he could pick her up and carry her back to the chicken run.
Contrast this to our dog, Harpo, who doesn't greet anyone until I get home, preferring instead to lounge on the back of the sofa, not even deigning to wag his tail in greeting.
All this adds up to a problem. We've got two hens who won't lay, who cost us money, who can't be boarded over Christmas, who can't survive untended, and whom we couldn't possibly slaughter, pluck and eat. The backyard chicken-keeper's dilemma.
That's the problem with living things. Even houseplants. I've got three. One is a cactus, which causes me no trouble. One is an asparagus fern, which looks like an awesome underseas plant but which sheds like a Christmas tree and irritates me all winter long. One is a spider plant, which looks like a bad hair day and barely survives the winter indoors. Every year, I tell myself I'll compost the houseplants at the end of the summer. Every year, I can't bring myself to do it. This year, I even left them outdoors until after the first hard freeze (that would be yesterday).
They refused to die.
In honor of the stuff project, I resolved finally to get rid of the spider plant and the asparagus fern rather than torture myself for another winter, cleaning up leaf particles and trying to find a space for them that gets enough light but won't hurt the wooden floors.
The unsentimental horticulturalists at work would roll their eyes, but in the end, I couldn't do it. First, I decided that instead of composting the asparagus fern, I'd give it to my mother. It looks so cool, and she's so good with plants. Then, I took a photo of the spider plant, emailed it to myself and marched it out to the compost container. Where I couldn't bring myself to dump it in. Instead, I rifled around in the recycling bin for a piece of cardboard, and wrote "FREE" on it, in big red letters. Carefully set it out on the street, where motorists and pedestrians would clearly see it. Told myself I could compost it tomorrow, if it's still out there.
Which brings me back around to the chickens.
How will a person who can't kill a houseplant get rid of two barren hens?
Could they given to a local farm?
ReplyDelete