The Chickens Cometh

This is the first of my future chicken posts--- showing you their progress, assuming they make that progress, into adult chickens. The little fluffy peckers arrived yesterday in a cardboard box, and already I'm not sure I am cut out to mother chicks.

I ordered Buff Brahma Bantam chickens from the only hatchery I could find that would sex banties and that would send me less than 25 chicks. There’s a dilemma there: you have to pay more money for sexed chicks and more money for fewer chicks. For a while, James was advocating getting the 25 and slaughtering the males and unwanted females, but I have my suspicions that neither he nor I could bring ourselves to do that when the time came. And in the meantime, I don’t have any place to put 25 chicks. So, we paid the liberal guilt money for only 5 chicks, all of which are supposed to be girls. Chuck and Sandy graciously sponsored two of them, and are coming to name their little 'god-chicks' soon.

Because we had only 5 chicks shipped, the box is small, and was supposed to come with a special heating unit. There wasn’t any heat coming from the box that I could detect, and I am a little suspicious that I paid extra for a “heating unit” otherwise known as straw packed into a small box with holes. We drove all the way home holding the box and peering into the holes to see if all of them were alive. When we got it open, we found they were all alive, so I suppose whatever shipping method was used, it worked.

As you may or may not know, hatcheries ship day-old baby chicks who are able to live for 48- 72 hours before getting food and water. They have eaten the yolk of their egg before hatching and are all tanked up for a few days (I always thought the yolk was the baby chick, but it’s not so: the yolk is the baby chick’s food). Anyway, brand new baby chicks need to live at a temperature of somewhere around 90-95 degrees, so we had to transfer them quickly to the heated brooder I had set up in the basement (yes, and I get to learn all this new terminology like “brooder”).

By the end of the first day, all but one of the baby chicks had found the water and had a drink and eaten some of their feed. I can stick my hand in and tap at the food, and they will come over and peck where I tap, which is pretty nifty. By the end of last night, I had resigned myself to losing this one little chick: it wouldn’t eat or drink and pretty much just slept sprawled out on the floor.

I woke up this morning and that chick was still not dead, so I researched what I should or could do for it. I followed the advice of a random website run by a backyard chicken enthusiast. I figured that if the chick was on the brink of dying anyway, what could it hurt? So, I set the chick up in a warmer, smaller box and fed it sugar water instead of regular water. It perked up with the sugar water and then drank regular water for the rest of the day, but it still didn’t eat and laid around looking half dead. I thought that at least it would have a peaceful death without being pecked or stepped on by the others.

Meanwhile, the other baby chicks would run around eating and pecking and drinking, and then mysteriously fall down where they were as if drugged and lay on the floor asleep. And when I say “laid on the floor” I mean it. They didn’t sleep like birds sleep, on their haunches or perched; they just seemed to pass out full out on the ground. Some of them would pass out in the middle of eating at their food dish or briefly in their water. I thought they must all have caught whatever disease the first one had, and resigned myself to having five dead chicks sometime at the end of the week.

In the meantime, we met the neighbors who have chickens up the street, and I asked her about the apparently drunk baby chickens. She said that was completely normal, and that it certainly was disturbing the first time you see it because the chicks look as if they are dying, but they’re just napping. This explains why you don’t see pictures of baby chicks napping on the web (I looked for quite awhile for one so I could see what normal chick napping would look like). Napping baby chicks are not cute: they look dead.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that my runt chick got better after her sugar water and time to herself. When I put her back in the large brooder with her sisters, she pecked at the food with them when I tapped it, and ran around with them to the water and to attack a stick I put in there for them. Fortunately, our neighbor loaned me a good chicken brooding book which I will devour over the next few days to avoid panicking myself unduly in the future.

And at some point, I will have to reconcile myself to the fact that we ordered 5 chicks because this was the number recommended by the hatchery if we wanted to end up with 3 chickens. Some of them are most likely not going to make it, but not just yet. Just now, they are all making it.

Literature for the Gardener

Three works of literature for the gardener in your life:


The Definition of Gardening

Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.
He likes nothing better than to put on
his little overalls and his straw hat.
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim."
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve.
He stands in the driveway a long time.
"Horticulture is a groping in the dark
into the obscure and unfamiliar,
kneeling before a disinterested secret,
slapping it, punching it like a Chinese puzzle,
birdbrained babbling gibberish, dig and
destroy, pull out and apply salt,
hoe and spray, before it spreads, burn roots,
where not desired, with gloved hands, poisonous,
the self-sacrifice of it, the self-love,
into the interior, thunderclap, excruciating,
through the nose, the earsplitting necrology
of it, the withering, shrivelling,
the handy hose holder and Persian insect powder
and smut fungi, the enemies of the iris,
wireworms are worse than their parents,
there is no way out, flowers as big as heads,
pock-marked, disfigured, blinking insolently
at me, the me who so loves to garden
because it prevents the heaving of the ground
and the untimely death of porch furniture,
and dark, murky days in a large city
and the dream home under a permanent storm
is also a factor to keep in mind."

---- James Tate


This poem seemed to make new for me that old idea that gardening is as much about killing things as it is about making them live. All the good gardening literature is about that seeming paradox (things must live to die). It’s an out-worn poetic theme (and one found in countless murder mysteries: it’s always the arsenic in the weed-killer that is a the red herring). Anyway, I’ve done my fair share of killing in the past few weeks. I’ve killed privet and poison ivy but also baby trees, some grubs and many spiders and pill bugs, as well as some trumpet vine and reeked genocidal revenge on the baby mosquito population. I have pushed one stray tomcat into near starvation only to have him replaced by another who seems better at surviving on moles. I recently bought my first serious deadly chemical, a spray that claims to kill poison ivy, and did spray it in my yard, reasoning that any plant that gives me itching, puss-filled hives justifies full on chemical warfare. So, as a gardener, I have become not only a killer--- I have begun to scheme towards more efficient means of annihilation. Of course, this made me think of Maxine Kumin’s poem:

The Woodchucks

Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.

Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.

The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the little woodchuck's face.
He died down in the ever bearing roses.

Ten minutes later I dropped the mother. She
flip-flopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next. O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the Hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.

There's one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form. I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they'd all consented to die unseen

gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.



A friend of ours has a young son finishing up preschool, and told me that the boy has become known as “the butterfly killer.” Apparently, one of the teachers brought several butterflies to school in one of those accordion cases that you can collapse and expand for catching insects. There were three or four adult butterflies in it for the children to inspect, and while the teacher was looking the other way, “the butterfly killer” collapsed the accordion caged several times smashing the butterflies inside. He was probably scolded by the teacher a bit and seen as violent or overly aggressive. I know that it was the kind of behavior his mother was informed about at any rate, and I would probably be dismayed as well if I were his teacher. Our friend, his mother, said that she was worried she had brought on this behavior because she has taught him that any bugs inside the house need to be killed and rewarded him for being brave and killing them.

This reminded me of Patricia Grace’s short story “Butterflies” that I often have students read, but one that James tells me is not as often anthologized as I think. Anyway, in any gathering of literature for gardeners, this one belongs as well.

Butterflies
By Patricia Grace

The Grandmother plaited her granddaughter’s hair and then she said, “Get your lunch. Put it in your bag. Get your apple. You come straight back after school, straight home here. Listen to the teacher,” she said. “Do what she say.”

Her grandfather was out on the step. He walked down the path with her and out onto the footpath. He said to a neighbor, “Our granddaughter goes to school. She lives with us now.”

“She’s fine,” the neighbor said. “She’s terrific with her two plaits in her hair.”

“And clever,” the grandfather said. “Writes every day in her book.”

“She’s fine,” the neighbor said.

The grandfather waited with his granddaughter by the crossing and then he said, “Go to school. Listen to the teacher. Do what she say.”

When the granddaughter came home from school her grandfather was hoeing around the cabbages. Her grandmother was picking beans. They stopped their work.

“You bring your book home?” the grandmother asked.

“Yes.”

“You write your story?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your story?”

“About the butterflies.”

“Get your book then. Read your story.”

The granddaughter took her book from her schoolbag and opened it.

“I killed all the butterflies,” she read. “This is me and this is all the butterflies.”

“And your teacher like your story, did she?”

“I don’t know.”

“What your teacher say?”

“She said butterflies are beautiful creatures. They hatch out and fly in the sun. The butterflies visit all the pretty flowers, she said. They lay their eggs and then they die. You don’t kill butterflies, that’s what she said.”

The grandmother and the grandfather were quiet for a long time, and their granddaughter, holding the book, stood quite still in the warm garden.

“Because you see,” the grandfather said, “your teacher, she buy all her cabbages from the supermarket and that’s why.”

My Back Yard Rocks!

Messy is the New Black

Delight in Disorder

A Sweet disorder in the dresse

Kindles in cloathes a wantonnesse:

A Lawne about the shoulders thrown

Into a find distraction:

An erring Lace, which here and there

Enthralls the Crimson Stomacher:

A Cuffe Neglectfull, and thereby

Ribbands to flow confusedly:

A winning wave (deserving Note)

In the tempestuous petticote:

A carelesse shooe-string, in whose tye

I see a wilde civility:

Doe more bewitch me, then when Art

Is too precise in every part.

----Robert Herrick

It’s good to be reminded that disorder is sexy (and has been for quite a long time).

I haven’t read Herrick in so long that I had forgotten him.

Home Improvement

Let me just say that the reality of home owning has fully made itself real to us.

Just after we moved, we decided to refinish our floors. HA. Obviously, we had no idea how serious labor this would involve. It took ten straight days of work. However, our floors do look good (they have a little, ahem, character, but it's a vast improvement).

Here's the photo album. We tried to document the process, but as you will see we eventually became so overwhelmed with the work of it that we stopped taking many photos.

Here's the living room with the original carpet. As you cannot smell the deeply embedded urine stains, you can't really get the full "before" effect. It was this before effect that caused us to refinish in the first place.

After we ripped up the carpet above (and forgot to take photos of the stained, grimy "before" floors), our next step was to seal off our possessions in one room that had tile. It's quite similar to a hazmat site. This picture is confusing, but that's billowing plastic along the right side and a mirror reflecting my feet on the left lower section. We taped up two plastic barriers and this worked pretty well to keep the saw dust out of the house. Sadly, as the heat vents that work best are in that room, it also kept much of the heat out of the rest of the house.





We rented the sanders, and started sanding. It's the first step in refinishing.

This is the drum sander. It's a serious piece of equipment, but less of a pain to use compared to the edger. There's no picture of the edger because the person using it has to bend all the way over, sticking their booty in the air and then "gently" move the heavy bastard in circles over the floor. It just seemed cruel to capture it on camera.

We sanded for 6 days or so. Our floors are oak, and warped. Some rooms took 4 passes with the drum sander.

Yes, James did look at me like that, pretty often.


This is the living room, sanded. For comparison in color, here's the floor beforehand from the bedroom. It was a dark stain, and you cannot really see the grime, pee stains, etc. However you can see some of the difference in color.













We then stained. At the end of this, I was deeply afraid that the floors would look pumpkin orange forever, but the stain mellowed as it dried and as we applied the polyurethane.
















Ah, finally we applied the polyurethane (James took all the pictures of this). This gives you a sense of the final color and tone of the floors. The floors much lighter than they were (not to mention cleaner and lacking the urine smell), and the stain is more translucent, so the various tones of the wood stand out more.







And after it dried, we moved in. Here's the Christmas tree in the living room. You can see the reflection from the floors here, shining back up at the tree.

It was mostly worth it. About day 6 or 7, I began to think "Ok, so this is my life now. I get up, cram a 'working man's' breakfast down my face, and then spend all day sanding and staining." It did eventually end.

I don't recommend doing this yourself if you have nice wood floors already, but really, it would have been hard not to improve ours. I still have to fill the spaces in between the wood and put the quarter round back on. I'll be doing that sometime around late May at the earliest.


Our other home improvement task was to deal with the 17 cats that were the previous owner's pets. Well, pets is a misleading word. Two of the cats were approachable. The rest were more or less feral cats that lived under our house in our basement. Almost anyone reading this will know what a sucker we are for animals and for cats. But this was truly an infestation. I forgot to feed them once and found the pack of them clogging my door, howling, ready to rush the place.

We lived with them for about 3 weeks, and I was truly ready for any solution that wouldn't leave little kitty corpses to decompose under my house. So, we called the city: the dreaded pound. And do you know, the pound here will not come get cats. Or, well, as the man at the pound told me, they will not come get live cats. Dead ones, yes. Dogs, yes. Live cats, no. He offered to lease

me a trap that I could trap them with and bring them in one at a time. Whether I could bring myself to lift a spitting, scratching cat in a cage into my car and drive it to the pound was, I learned, a moot point. All the traps were already rented (of course) and he couldn't say when they would be in.

I don't know if you have ever been somewhere that 17 cats have been living in close quarters. It's not pleasant.

So, we contracted with a company called 'Critter Getters' who specialize in humane methods, and forked over the cash payment. They take the cats, medically treat them, fix them, and set them up as barn cats. It took the two men 4 days to catch them all. We helped by luring them into a sealed off basement room and shutting them in. One of the men was bitten through his reinforced gloves (through the Kevlar) deep into his finger. Cats don't mess around.

What I've Been Up To

What I've been up to, besides all the movie-watching and teaching and whatnot.

We bought a house, and are moving in at the end of the month. It's beautiful and next to the National Park land. I'll spare you the pictures of the boxes slowly filling our house.

And, I've been working on some paintings. My photography leaves much to be desired, but you can get the idea from these.

"another season, another reason . . . for makin' whoopee"

Well, I had pretty much stopped writing in this thing. However, I was going to send far too many people emails about this, so I decided just to write about it. I am dying to know what everyone I know thinks about this.

Here’s the situation:

I’ve been teaching an excellent lesson I stole from Sandy in my composition classes. It uses an article by Robert J. Halli written about Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.”

Here’s a copy of “To His Coy Mistress” in case you haven’t read it since your very own college composition class.

HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side 5
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews. 10
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast, 15
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate. 20
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found, 25
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust: 30
The grave 's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires 35
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power. 40
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun 45
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

GLOSS: slow-chapt: slow-jawed, slowly devouring (well, I needed the gloss, so I assume you did too)

So it’s a poem about sex, remember? Carpe diem and whatnot, which we dutifully learned from our professors and then just as dutifully practiced later outside of class.

Well, Halli makes an elegant argument that I don’t have room to do justice to here, but the jist of it is . . . wait for it . . . that the poem is about procreation. He does some pretty solid research into imagery used at the time and concludes that the act of rolling “all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball” alludes to making babies. Ha!

There’s also some fairly good evidence for seeing the lines “tear our pleasures with rough strife/ Thorough the iron gates of life” as an allusion to birth. It’s a nifty little argument, really.

Anyway, apart from being your English teacher for the day, here’s the odd thing. All my students assume that Halli is arguing that the poem is about procreation, and therefore he must also be arguing that the poem is not about the pleasure of sex at all (he doesn’t state this anywhere).

That is, my students usually assume that procreation and sexual pleasure are mutually exclusive. If someone is writing about procreation, then the act they are referring to (sex) must not involve pleasure of any kind. I have found myself faced with informing the faceless masses I teach that these two things are not mutually exclusive. I don’t really feel this is the job of an English teacher. Surely, a health or psychology teacher should be the source of such wisdom?

Now, aside from feeling that I’m spreading useful information around about sex, it has blown me away how incredibly ingrained in the American psyche is the division between sex for procreation and sex for pleasure. For my students, these are completely separate acts, and it seems to sneak up on them and surprise them that they are both, umm . . . sex.

And I can see where they get the idea. It does at times seem a knee-jerk reaction to consider the words “sex for procreation” as something without pleasure, especially given the dour and, well, un-sexy people who usually use the term. But does anyone know where I can find out how this particular division between sex to make babies and sex for pleasure came about in our culture?

I’m not a particular proponent of marriage myself, but wouldn’t those wishing to promote it do better to undo this particular misconception? (And I was tempted to put “about conception” here, but that would only have made all of you sick.) How did we get to this place? Should I blame the Puritans? The Catholics? Sex education classes? George Bush? (Ok, that was just because it's how all rants at our house end.)

Someone must have the answers . . .