New Life Forms

For reasons unknown to me, I have been particularly busy these last few days. Before I realized it, I had bush-hogged the whole place, brought down the wrath of the civilized world on dastardly privet lurking in the shadows, plotted and channeled run-off ditches in the garden and, to top off the day, plowed up a melon patch, flower garden, and spud bed. All of that in one day. What makes it even more remarkable is that when I started out this morning, I had only a vague idea of how the day would unfold.

I have new life forms on the farm. I resolved I would get cat after Lily went missing several months ago. It is not that I am a big cat fan but, truth is, if you live in the country, you need a mouser, even if your roommate is Mr. Clean or the Pine-Sol maid. My best intentions were hanging around unfulfilled when one day I caught sight of a stray cat streaking from behind the chicken house to the woods just west of the garden. WitchWoman recommended that I put out some cat food in hopes of enticing the feline to make this her home. As usual, I followed the recommendation. Long story short, there is a cute little cat now on patrol in the house and on the grounds.

Tinker and I went in on some new chickens. I bought 18 Golden Orpintons. Tinker got four Rhode Island Reds and four Pearl Leghorns. For now, all of them are in one of my chicken houses. When they arrived they were nothing more than balls of fur. After a few days, they are developing feathers and starting to look like chickens. I check on them several times each day to make sure they have water, food and heat.

In order to make room for the new chicks, I had to move the four hens and one rooster (Ferdinand) who lived in the upper house (upper only in that it is closer to the house) to the lower house. The lower house has a dozen hens and a rooster (The Other Guy). Well, the moment I put Ferdinand in with The Other Guy, they started fighting. That went on for several days. I knew that the fight was over when I found The Other Guy hiding behind the feed bucket. Ferdinand had whaled on him properly. Nature can be tough sometimes.

Here is the point to all of this. Since inviting the cat into the house, I have seen no evidence of mice. It is as though just having the cat here intimidates the rodents. Then, you see the battle between Ferdinand and The Other Guy with the outcome being supremacy in the hen house. (Let me add that all the hens from both houses are long of beak with no interest in raising broods of chicks. In other words these guys are fighting over strutting rights for an audience that is ambivalent.) Just makes me suspect that Nature imposes her own kind of Order onto the Chaos of everyday life. My friend Rog (a physicist) would argue that Chaos rules. I am not so sure. Rats and roosters seem to support my suspicion that there is something to Natural Order.