Shake Ya Tail-Feathers:
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By C. “Rascal” Hansen
These days a person can buy just about anything on the web.
My friends and I even ordered chicks off the internet once when we were in high school. No, I’m not talking about Russian e-mail-order brides.
By chicks, I mean baby chickens.
My friends Donny, GT and I were first inspired to throw our hats into the poultry-raising arena during a trip to the Minnesota State Fair.
The three of us took the Metro Transit bus out to The Fair, just like we had done every year since sixth grade.
The first order of business when we reached The Fair was to hold our annual Pronto Pup Corn-dog eating contest.
We each bought five of those grotesque, batter-fried hotdogs on a stick, and sat down on a curb to begin gorging ourselves.
Donny threw in the towel at 4 and a half corn-dogs. GT finished all five, but opted not to eat anymore. I plowed on, and consumed three more just to humiliate them.
Next, we strolled over to the Midway. Our ambitious plan was to see how many amusement park rides we could stomach without vomiting.
In the end each of us managed to endure 3 trips on the antiquated, wooden roller-coaster and 2 bouts with the Tilt-a-Whirl, before we found ourselves green-faced, groaning and wobbly-kneed.
We staggered to the nearest patch of shade, where we collapsed on the ground. The oppressive August humidity, and heavy stench of body odor and fried foods pushed us all to the limits of our intestinal fortitude. It was over an hour before we recovered, but I am proud to say none of us lost our lunch.
Once we were ready to venture back into the crowd we chose to wander over to the 4H livestock buildings.
The first barnyard spectacle to catch our attention was the State’s fattest pig. A large wooden sign declared that the pig weighed 928 lbs, a new state record. It lay in a massive heap in the corner of a large stall surrounded by fairgoers.
They stared, pointing fingers and shaking their heads. A father hoisted his small daughter onto his shoulders so she could see the pig over the bustling throng of gawkers.
The animal’s tired eyes and labored breathing reminded me of Miss Swenson.
Miss Swenson was an obese, middle-aged woman who lived on my block.She had won the Miss Minnesota pageant decades ago. And, like all Miss Minnesota’s, she had the distinct honor of having her bust carved in a block of butter that was displayed in a refrigerated glass case at the fair.
In her 30’s, however, Miss Swenson developed a glandular problem that caused her to gain 106 pounds. Soon after, her husband ran off with a 19-year old waitress from Denny’s.
I always had to go by her house whenever I went to see GT. I often observed her corpulent form laying in a hammock on the porch, engulfed in a cloud of Pall Mall cigarette smoke.
Occasionally, I spied a wistful smile on her face, beaming through the grey haze. I imagined she was either dreaming about Little Caesar Pizza or those lost days when she could have her pick of the high school boys down at the local Dairy Queen.
The longer I thought about the pig and Miss Swenson the more depressed I became. I suggested to Donny and GT we go somewhere else.
We chose to meander over to the barn where the prize chickens were held.
The snappy crow of roosters echoed off the overarching steel rafters as we wandered through the doorway of the hangar-like building. This was accompanied by the hypnotic melody of clucking hens and ancient, whirring fans.
A swarm of young 4H members scurried about the building, hopefully doting upon the many award-winning birds.
We worked our way up and down the long aisles of cages that contained every imaginable breed of chicken, ranging from feisty little bantams, to big and sassy Rhode Island Reds.
We spent the majority of our time sizing up the roosters with their rubbery red wattles and long, flashy tail-feathers. We were captivated by one particularly aggressive white rooster.
Donny decided it was a good idea to poke at the bird with a soda straw through a hole in its cage. It did not take long for the bird to catch hold of the straw with its beak.
An intense tug of war ensued between bird and boy. Donny leveraged what little strength he had in his scrawny forearms, while the rooster hunkered down and strained backwards with flapping wings. Donny’s hands grew sweaty, and the straw finally slipped from his grasp.
The victorious bird strutted proudly around its cage. It held its new prize high in the air. After a few laps around the cage, it hid the straw in the far corner, and unleashed a defiant crow.
A half-dozen 4H-ers, GT and I burst out in laugher and clapped for the rooster. Donny cursed loudly. Always a sore loser, Donny insisted that we leave, and we agreed to head to the afternoon Pro LumberJack Exhibition sponsored by Stihl Chainsaws.
We discussed the theoretical merits of having pet chickens as we hustled to the Exhibition.
Donny and GT talked about how convenient it would be to have a steady stream of free eggs on hand anytime we wanted to “egg” someone’s house.
I conceded that having chickens would have some potential perks, but reminded them that we lived in the suburbs.
“Where would we keep them?” I asked.
“Your house!” They exclaimed in unison.
“Obviously, your house is the crappiest,” GT elaborated. “And besides, our mom’s would never go for it.”
I was not enthusiastic about shouldering the social stigma of being known as the only kid in my high school with farm animals living in his backyard. I already had a solid reputation as a hayseed, and adding animal husbandry to a list of hobbies that included hunting and fishing would not help the situation.
The longer the scheme incubated in the fertile dung-heap of my delinquent mind, however, the more it appealed to me. By the time we boarded the bus home I was sold.
That evening we paged through a hatchery catalogue that we took from the fair. Tempers ran high as we battled over which breeds we should eventually order.
In the end though, we decided on a fairly conservative selection of fowl: two black and white speckled Barred-Rocks, an Aracanua that was reputed to lay green-shelled eggs, and a Pearl White Leg-Horn.
We also reached a consensus that we would only raise hens. Not until our fledgling operation developed into a lucrative neighborhood-wide egg cartel would we begin to consider buying roosters.
The following afternoon we moved forward on plans to design a coop for our as of yet imaginary chickens.
GT had stayed up most of the previous night feverishly drafting blueprints for an ambitious two-story, chicken mansion, which included individual rooms for each bird. He had also devised an elaborate scheme to heat and light the coop with electricity pirated from the neighbors.
Donny and I were both impressed. But after taking into account our combined financial resources in relation to the significant cost of lumber, we concluded we might have to scale back the design.
We sketched a new plan on a paper plate with a black Sharpie marker, and then waited for night fall, when we could scour nearby construction sites for building materials.
By 2 am we had acquired a haphazard haul of fiberboard, sheet-rock, shreds of insulation, cinderblocks and loose shingles. All the material was transported back to my house in Donny’s Mom’s white mini-van. We agreed to reconvene the next day to begin construction.
It only took us a few hours to piece together a modest, patchwork shelter from the limited supplies we had scavenged.
We were almost finished with the coop when my Mom arrived home from work. She heard the hammering and sawing behind the garage, and came to see what we were up to.
We froze when she came around the corner of the garage.
She stood with her hands on her hips and surveyed our industrious handiwork.
“What are you boys up to now?” She asked.
“Building a coop for the chickens,” Donny blurted out.
“CHICKENS?” My Mom turned to me. “No one told me we were getting chickens.”
“Ummmm.....Yeah, uh, I was going to tell you tonight. It’s not a big deal, I swear. We just want to get a few. For eggs,” I stammered.
“Yeah, our Mom’s won’t let us get them,” GT chimed in.
“Did you even ask your Mothers'?” My Mom inquired.
“Well no, but they don’t even let us have pets.” GT responded.
My Mom examined the coop more closely. “Is it even legal to have chickens in the city?”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said. “I mean it’s not like we’re getting a cow or something. People do it all the time. I read about it in a book once.”
“Okay,” my Mom conceded. “But where are you going to buy chickens? I don’t think they sell them at PetSmart.”
“You can order them on the internet. From a hatchery. I “googled” it,” Donny answered her without hesitation.
“Fine, just make sure I don’t get arrested and hauled off to jail for ‘harboring chickens’ in the suburbs,” she muttered before walking away.
Suburban Chicken Rancher - Audio
Copyright©2008 Richard Hansen. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. Rascal Hansen is a trademark of Richard Hansen.