We poor humans, on
the other hand, have to fend for ourselves.
Further, as the
astute reader may note, more often than not, chickens are of markedly
shorter stature than humans.
There were many
occasions when this simple fact of physiology would become very relevant
to our lifestyles, but the one that is most clearly embedded in my memory
is this:
If you have any small
children in the house, then you know that they are much easier to maintain
and care for when they are asleep.
That principal in
mind, we always tried to maximize the amount of time that children in our
care spent unconscious.
Up until the time of moving to
the chicken-house, I had conditioned myself to come flying out of bed in
the morning, then to sprint across the bedroom, tossing myself at the
alarm clock, there to wrestle it to the floor and still the thunder in its infernal goozle, lest it wake the children. Now that the girls' bedroom was only a
suspended blanket away from ours, this situation was all the more
critical.
I kept the alarm
clock across the room because I knew that if I could reach it in bed, I
wouldn't be waking up. However, waking up didn't prove to be as much of a
problem as staying conscious.
When the alarm went
off that first morning, I shot out of bed on my mad scramble for the alarm
clock.
I didn't make it.
Instead I found that
the ceiling directly over where we had located our million-pound waterbed
was quite a bit too low for me to stand up. My forehead met with a rough
sawn oak 2 x 8 rafter with the concussive force of two charging rhinos.
Oak is very durable
stuff; both thicker and tougher than even the densest human skull (witness
mine). Early man favored clubs made of strong, resilient oak for bashing
in the brains of his enemies. I learned that if, using extreme force, one
strikes a seasoned oak timber with a large piece of hollow bone, a deep,
rich percussive sound is produced.
Out-of-doors, I'm
sure there would be a fine echo.
I don't think I care
to tell you how many times I had to crush my cranium against that rafter
before I adapted my routine to it, but I'm a pretty quick study under such
conditions.
There were other
chicken vs. man issues that had to be dealt with. For example, chickens
don't use plumbing, not one of them in my experience. It's just not part
of their culture.
People, on the other
hand, have evolved to the point where we consider it a virtual necessity.
