The Tale Of The One-Eyed Pecker

Not much is happening here at Chicken Central. Nine eggs today. So far. The brown-egg layers and the guineas have been shocked out of laying, I suppose, because these eggs were all white. Survivor the rooster is beside himself with those two black pants roosters taunting him all day. They walk around outside the pen, or sit on top of the fence. Survivor tries to get at them through the chain-link. They run along beside the fence when he charges, stirring him up even more. If he's not paying attention, they puff out their chests and flap their wings, which gets Survivor all perturbed and crowing. Chickens are natural peckers. That's what the school custodian told me, just before he realized what he'd said.

Yesterday, The Pony told me, "One of the chickens is missing an eye." Eeewww! He went on to say, "Don't worry, it wasn't pecked out by the other chickens. It was BORN that way. There's just a flap of skin where the eye should be." Yuck! I was contemplating a small leather eyepatch for the poor thing. Oh, and Farmer H reported that he should have looked at that cage of chickens closer when he bought them, because hens cost $5 and roosters only cost $1, and he was overcharged what with 4 of those 10 chickens turning out to be roosters. Farmer H got cheated at the auction! Hard to believe, isn't it? That's the way he goes through life. His impulses get him in trouble. That's why I don't let him go alone to buy a car from a dealer. He's like my friend Jim, who once bought a Chevy S10 and agreed to pay $1000 over the sticker price for undercoating. "Well, Jim, we undercoated it, but we didn't put it on the sticker." It was all I could do not to rip out my hair by the handfuls. I don't know why he asked me to go with him on his car-buying trip if he didn't want my advice. His reply was, "I don't care. I like it and I want it."

But that's got nothing to do with chickens. Today, The Pony said, "Mom, you know that chicken with one eye? Well, last night dad and I got to looking at it, and it really has TWO eyes, Mom! We just couldn't see it. It had been keeping one eye closed every time we were around, and there were feathers over it. But last night, we saw that it has two eyes!" OK. I can't tell one chicken from another, unless they are the different colors. One leghorn looks like another. So I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket that Farmer H and The Pony were even looking at the Chicken Formerly Known As One-Eye.

The Mansion has hit the summer doldrums, without the official beginning of summer. HH has taken off for vacation beginning Thursday and stretching through next week. Tomorrow, HH is taking The Pony to Six Flags as class trip for reading. The whole class got free tickets. Of course, just being 5th graders, their parents bought tickets to take them, so Six Flags should not be going bankrupt with this marketing plan. The #1 son is skipping his last day of summer school to go along. It's going to be the hottest day of the year.

I am staying home to mind the chickens, in case anybody cares. I detest Six Flags. I don't like rides, I don't like crowds, and I don't like walking around on blacktop on the hottest day of the year. Because I am a selfless saint, I am insisting that my boys drive my T-Hoe on their trip. At least the air conditioning works and it has a working speedometer. I even topped of the gas tank with MID-GRADE gas at $2.59 per gallon. Because that's the kind of gal I am.

HH is leaving me the $1000 Caravan. I don't plan to leave the Mansion.