Chickens…

I have always loved chickens. When I was a kid, we had a chicken house. So did my friends who lived up the hill. The four of us girls used to spend HOURS watching the chickens. Marveling at their stupidity. At the strange and comforting noises they made. We learned to imitate the deeply flawed crow of my friends’ rooster.

The project I’m working on has a bit of a chicken theme. The side effect is that I am yearning for chickens. I have convinced our two-doors down neighbor that having our own chickens would be second only to having a personal aircraft (fresh eggs! pastoral noises! garden fertilizer!) But the neighbor in the middle doesn’t feel the chicken love. Please keep in mind I’m almost certain that we aren’t allowed to have chickens here. We live in an area that looks rural but is in fact very suburban.

I’ve thought about digging a underground tunnel and housing my chickens in a cave. The fact that we live on a huge rock makes this impractical. Also, I’m not sure that would be fair to the chickens. I’ve thought of creating network of bridges and raised platforms in the trees to link the chicken-friendly houses. But this leaves the problem of getting the eggs without breaking our necks. Also, the non-chicken-loving neighbors might notice the birds overhead, especially if they are of the fancy variety that I covet.

This American Life recently featured a seriously unsentimental story about a performance artist who kept a chicken on top of his fridge for several months for reasons that were never made clear (he failed to kill the poor bird during his performance). I wonder how I could convince James that keeping a chicken or two on the fridge might be a good idea? Perhaps if they are small and cute enough?

If I do become a rogue chicken keeper, I’ll keep you posted. People who live in Mexico don’t have this problem.