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.”