Personal hygiene on the sly...

A curious thing they are, teenage girls.

The other day, Emily came downstairs on her way to school, slung her backpack onto the kitchen table where Lizzy and I were eating breakfast, unzipped a front pouch and pulled out a container of mens’ underarm deodorant.

She took off the lid, slapped all the broken pieces back down into one sort of solid piece, then proceeded to put it on under her clothes.

On principle, I try not to swear at my kids but, as I was caught off guard and laughing, it slipped out.

“Emily! What the hell?”

She looked up at me and continued applying deodorant.

“What? I’m putting on deodorant.”

(“Duh, Mom,” Lizzy piped in.)

“I always take deodorant to school. I sweat a lot. That’s why I use Dad’s.”

“So you go into the bathroom and put it on in there?”

“No. I put it on in class when no one is looking.”

I let that sink in.

She said if she feels sweaty, or feels like she smells like she’s sweaty, she just looks around, slumps down into her chair and secretly applies deodorant under her arms.

She said because she sits in the back of her all her classes, this isn’t really a problem.

“It’s cool.”

I let that one sink in, too.

I am glad she’s practicing good hygiene. I’m not so sure how I feel about her practicing it in public.

Lizzy + Hugo = BFF

In this world, there are cat people and there are dog people. Our youngest daughter is a cat person. And if cats and dogs can be person specific, our cat is definitely a Lizzy cat.

From the very first day I brought Hugo home, she was his person. He was a 12-week-old kitten and she a 6-year-old girl. She walked into the bedroom where he was curled up on the bed. He took one look at her, got up and walked right over to her.

My husband cringed the first time Lizzy announced that Hugo was her “cat boyfriend.”

Whenever the cat is missing, he is inevitably found in Lizzy’s room, either curled up under the covers, on the bean bag chair or sitting in an empty toy bin. Once we found him in the toy chest, sleeping amongst all the Webkins and stuffed animals.

The floor of her bedroom is covered with clothes, Legos, stuffed animals and the various knick knacks that make up a 10-year-old’s life. There is always something of interest going on in her room that Hugo must be a part of.

And Lizzy is merciless in her play with him. She dressed him in doll clothes. (He didn’t like that). She would hold him against his will, suffering him to her kisses and favorite TV shows. (He would loudly meow in protest and glare at the rest of us.)

One day I walked into her bedroom to find him squeezed into the tiny animal carrier that came with her toy veterinarian kit. He was a patient in her care.

“Does he like it in there,” I asked.

“No,” she answered matter of factly, as she poked him through the cage side with her stethoscope.

Now, four years later, she merely decorates him with hair bows around his neck. (He tolerates that.)

Yet, he always comes back to her.

He calls to her from the other room, wanting to play with a cat toy or peacock feather. He sits outside the bathroom door, meowing to be let in while she takes a shower. He can be found almost every night, curled up on her bed at her side.

They are best friends, forever.

Mrs. Boss

I was driving down the road to my house the other day and slowed as I saw my neighbor shooing one of his chickens out of the road and back into his yard.

I stopped and rolled down my window and said to him, “There’s always one hen who doesn’t think the rules apply to her.”

We’ve had our share of chickens with that mentality: at least two of them have been run down because something looked yummier on the other side of the road.

(Why?? Why do the chickens cross the road??)

And every once in a while, my oldest daughter will go running out the door, waving her arms: “You chickens get out of the road.”

Mrs. Boss

Mrs. Boss is our hen who is thinks she is above the rules.

She is the lone survivor from the first batch of chicks my husband and daughter brought home. That would make her maybe four years old.

She is all “attitudy-judy.” She scares the bejezzus out of my youngest daughter. She sees daughter #2 and starts running towards her. Daughter #2 sees Mrs. Boss come running at her and lets out a primal scream and she starts running for me.

I put myself between my child and the rampaging hen. I’ve been pecked plenty of times by Mrs. Boss. She’s even drawn blood, rotten chicken. She looks at someone, and cocks her head to the side. The neck feathers start to puff out as she stretches out her neck, trying to make herself look scarier.

She’s job at that.

And until Frank the rooster came along, she was the big boss of the hen house. In the pecking order of chickens, she was the top chick. Nobody got any food or water, or raisins out of my hand, until she got there first. And God help the chicken that found some tasty worm or bug in the yard: Mrs. Boss would swoop down on her like a hawk from out of the sky.

Experts say chickens are most productive their first two years, or so, and then they slow down and eventually stop.

But Mrs. Boss is one hell of an egg layer. I’ll give her that. A hybrid chicken created for commercial laying, she lays every day. We can only identify the eggs of two birds: one small grayish hen that lays a dusky, greenish-blue egg about every other third day, and Mrs. Boss’ pterodactyl sized brown egg.

They also say chickens can live 12 years or something crazy like that. We would never help Mrs. Boss to her ending although I have threatened her at times with my soup pot.

And there have been plenty of times when we’ve lost hens, “Sweetie,” Midnight,” “Cupcake” or “Jumper,” when my daughter has lamented about losing the nice chickens, but Mrs. Boss endures.

I guess what my Great Aunt Em used to say about herself can be applied to Mrs. Boss:

“The Devil don’t want me ‘cause I’m too green to burn.”

Death and the chickens

If I had known there would be so much death involved with chickens, I doubt I would have let my oldest daughter get mixed up with them.
She was 10, I think, when my husband and her unexpectedly brought home that very first box of six yellow, fluffy chicks from the feed store.
"Mom, don't be mad," she said, as my husband stood there with hiding something behind his back, even though those chicks were cheeping loud enough to be heard from the driveway. My husband said she had named all of them before he had even paid for them.
She was smiling and so full of excitement, how could I say no?
But a week later, that excitement was replaced with utter grief when one of those fragile chicks just up and died on her.
She was inconsolable and there wasn't anything I said that made her feel any better.
It was the first time she really felt the loss that comes with death, I think.
I think, when my mother-in-law passed away after a long illness, our daughter thought of her death in the same way any 6-year-old does: "Grandma's not here now."
But this time, four years later, death was more real for my daughter.
At 10, something she had bonded with, fed and cleaned up after and held, had become a a stiff, fluffy corpse.
So we buried that little chick under a tree in the backyard, holding our own dignified "Mass of chicken burial" for it.
That has become our grieving process when we find a dead chicken. I would hear a sudden onslaught of tears or scream of horror. Then whomever found the chicken would come to me and confirm my suspicions. I'd remove the dead hen and put her in a plastic grocery bag, tie the ends. Dig the hole. Get the chicken. Both daughters, there is a sisterly-sharing of grief, stand by and watch while I bury the chicken. One of them will say "she was a good hen" or something like that, and that's it.
Who knew a chicken's life could be so nasty, brutish and short?
Last night, we came home from delivering eggs to a customer and my husband was standing in the yard next to the pen where my daughter keeps her bantam brown Cornish rooster and 3 hens. He looked at the car, looked at the ground, looked back at us. I knew something was wrong.
One of her Cornish hens was dying. Who knows why? Sometimes, a chicken will be walking around the yard, scratching for bugs one day and the next day stop eating then the day after that, it's dead.
The Cornish are the sweetest birds. They walk right over to us if we are sitting outside. They are curious. Docile. Beautiful.
My oldest daughter knelt to the ground and gently stroked the dying hen's feathers.
"It's ok," she said.
"You're gonna go to a better chicken pen now," said my youngest daughter.
I held the dying bird as my oldest and her dad put together a wooden crate with straw in the garage so the bird wouldn't have to be exposed to whatever might be out roaming during the night.
She sat with it for awhile. Then came inside and got ready for bed.
I don't have a provacative thought here that leaves this story in a tidy little package.
The hen died.
My daughter is sad.
She lost a sweet, gentle bird that had shown well for her at the Farm Show in January.

I guess we all just move on.

My first post

This is my first post on my first blog, "children, chickens & a cat." As you can guess, I will be writing about myself and my children and the chickens and my cat and the other animals we collect at our place that don't begin with the letter C and therefore wouldn't fit into the title of this blog.

I will make this first entry short, since I am feeling a little awkward about the whole "blog" thing. But, I want to embrace technology, not run away from it screaming.

A little background info: I am 44, married, with two children, both girls: a 13-year-old and a 9-year-old. The oldest raises chickens for showing and eggs. The youngest has a bunny. We also have a 4 year old Rhodesian Ridgeback named Mimi.

The cat, a 3 year old Bengal, is named Hugo. The chickens and bunny also have names, but I'll save that for another post.

toodles....