Ever have one of those days? Like the kind when you were in grade school and your mum packed your lunch and when lunch time rolled around you savagely tore into the sandwich from your lunch sack only to find it was an egg salad sandwich? Which immediately caused all your surrounding lunch mates to scream “Who farted!” Because, well, you know how an egg salad sandwich smells when first opened. Only it wasn’t funny, because you could’ve died from embarrassment. Or disgust, because now you couldn’t possibly eat that sandwich for fear the cute boy sitting across the table from you would know you just weren’t cool. This may or may not have happened to me once.
Today is not about egg salad though. But it does relate to chickens.
It started like any other morning for the most part. Except this morning it was storming like hell, so I got myself out of bed and showered a little earlier, before heading out to the barn, instead of after. With all the lightning, I was afraid the power might go out. My thought? Take a shower now. In case the power goes.
Understand, If the power goes out, my well pump quits and I have no water in the house. The animals on the other hand, can get water from another source. So of course I put my own needs first in this case.
So I did my shower thing and headed out to the barn. With a little extra time on my hands, I decided it was a good day to do a chicken “head count” to see where I was at, moving into the on-coming winter. Frankly, I needed to know how many more birds I could stuff into the freezer.
I climbed up into the loft and all under the rafters, looking up and counting bodies (chickens) and taking inventory. I made the rounds three times to make sure I got an accurate count. Yep, thirty-six. Final count.
- 3 Tiny chicks
- 9 Green and blue egg layers (off-limits for the freezer)
- 3 Roosters – also off-limits
- 4 Old hens – definitely on the menu
- 1 Hen, with a broken wing, which is healed ( very crooked) but when she gets turned over she sometimes cannot get herself back up and that’s just cruel. She is the mum of those tiny chicks so I have to keep her alive (and upright) for another month or two. Then I’ll put her down.
- 16 Miscellaneous young hens, that I can either eat or keep around for eggs for a bit longer.
Did I do the math right? It was never my best subject…
Anyway, after I returned back into the house and was busy drinking coffee and getting ready, I noticed my hair was a little wet on one side. It was raining, so I thought nothing of it. But when my hair wasn’t drying out and started getting all tangled, that’s when I noticed the smell… Chicken. Shit.
Damn it, damn it, damn it. Wet, slimy, smelly fresh SHIT. I almost gagged. It’s a worse smell than a fresh-opened egg salad sandwich, I can promise you that. But just for fun, keep this little nugget in mind – that crap originated from the same orifice as that egg that made the egg salad… Thankfully eggs come in their own protective package.
Now I had to re-wash my hair. So I did. Had I gone out to the barn first, I’d only be washing once, of course.
Thankfully, I didn’t miss discovering the shit and instead go on to work without catching the mishap. Who knows what kind of looks I might have gotten in my ten-o-clock meeting. ~A
P.S. Parents out there – If you love your kid, NEVER, ever send your kid to school with and egg salad sandwich in their lunch bag. You’re welcome.
