Easter Chicks Gone Bad:

The Unexpected Menace

continued from page 1

At first, my son just carried a big stick when he played outside.  Since the roosters outnumbered him, after a while he only went out to play after they roosted in the evening.  He was becoming pale and a little twitchy.

Invitations to our house became BYOB - Bring Your Own Broom.

It was time for the roosters to go.

We tried to catch them, but they were fast as greased lightning, very wary, and practiced survivors, being the ones who outlived coyote-fest.

I ran an ad in the Thrifty Nickel that read: "Free Roosters. White Leghorns, 7 months old. Free Range. Mean as Snakes. You Catch."

The first 6 calls I got were not for the chickens, but for the stove we were giving away (read the ad again).  The 2 good ol' boys who attempted catching the roosters went away empty-handed, the taunting of the roosters ringing in their ears.

Nabbing them while they were sleeping was difficult since they roosted way out on the limb of an oak tree 20 feet in the air.

I hated our chickens.

I began trying to run them down with the car as I drove into the yard.  I could SEE them going under the car, but they always exploded out from behind, missing tail feathers, and screaming poultry death threats.

One of them actually leaped up onto the hood of the car, glared at me through the windshield and crowed defiantly.

I loathed our chickens.

At long last, the son of a friend came after dark, perched atop the tallest stepladder we had, and plucked them neatly from the oak tree.

The roosters were back in the cage they had first come in.  With the Fearsome Foursome behind bars, our "hen" started crowing.  Lacy was really Larry.  He has been warned that he's ridiculously easy to catch, living in a tent and all, so he'd better behave or he will suffer the same fate.

Like the idiot I am, now I pitied the chickens.

What to do with them?

The obvious answer, kill them and eat them, is still beyond my ability.  I KNOW they are just chickens, and we eat chicken all the time.  I KNOW given weapons, opposable thumbs, and a nice gas grill, they would have no problem killing and eating us.  I just couldn't do it.  Still working on that part of farming...

We couldn't give them away to lay siege to someone else’s yard.

We toyed with the idea of driving far away, finding a nice wild wooded spot, and setting them free.  My husband even started singing "Bock, Bock, Bock, Born Free...", but we were advised that they would have a bad environmental impact on the wilderness.

Finally, they went into the stewpot at a friend's father-in-law's house, an ignoble ending to what could have been a glorious life.

Poor chickens.

I didn't mind the constant crowing, the massive amounts of poop EVERYWHERE, the feathers.  If they just hadn't been aggressive, they could've lived long and free for all of their chicken days.

Stupid chickens.

I feel sad, because, after all -

We loved our chickens.