Life has a way of making a person a little crazy. This is especially true if you live in a city. The hustle of the everyday grind, the demands of a rigorous schedule, the non-stop traffic and annoying neighbors. It all adds up to a recipe for a migraine. Of the massive skull splitting variety.
I’ve lived in a fairly large city now for almost four years, and to be honest, I cannot stand it. The city within which I live recently made Newsweeks top ten list of dying cities. Crime and decay are rampant. Granted, the convenience of my everyday needs being never more than a ten minute drive is nice, but in all honesty, is this any way to live? But, we must all make the best of our current situations, be they good or bad. I find optimism is always the better approach.
When I was a child, I had the privilege of living on a farm in Ligonier, Indiana for a portion of my young life. We grew corn mostly, field and sweet, but we grew other things as well. We kept a huge garden, raised a bull and a few hogs every year, the occasional rabbit, and barn cats (my favorite of which happened to be named “Billy Big Balls”, for obvious reasons). Ah, and we had a bunch of bantam chickens we kept for eggs.
Now for those of you who don’t know what a bantam is, allow me to elaborate. A bantam is a tiny type of chicken, which would seem more in place as a pet in someone’s house than on a barnyard. Weighing all of a pound or two, with the girth of an apple they appear very miniscule. You would lose track of them in an unmaintained lawn. But they are beautiful little creatures, with iridescent hues of green, silver, and metallic black. Do not let their diminutive size fool you though, they have the heart of a lion. I learned this very quickly as a child, collecting eggs from the henhouse. Or at least trying to collect eggs from the henhouse.
It was a beautiful sunny Indiana afternoon after school, not long after our neighbor decided to get rid of his flock of bannys, as he called them, and being neighborly farm folk, offered them to us. The cottonwood’s were depositing their late summer “snowflakes” on the breeze, and the air had the smell of fresh blooms. I had gotten off the school bus and decided to see if our new hens had left us any gifts in their nest boxes. So after the quarter mile trek down the dirt lane that led to our farmhouse, I dropped my books on the porch and headed out for the old henhouse.
I turned the handle and stepped inside. If you are very familiar with old henhouses, then you know that part of the inside has a chicken wire divider that separate’s the chickens area from the feed and supplies area. I turned the latch on the dividers door, really just an old screen door, and crept inside. All the hens were out on the yard, and the two roosters were out with them. As I approached the nest boxes, I saw eggs, lots and lots of them. It seemed as though each hen had laid two in a days time. So I grabbed the wire egg basket by the handle, and began collecting the fresh goodies.
I didn’t have more than two or three eggs in the basket when from behind me, I heard a sound. It sounded like a primordial growl, almost guttural in nature. As I turned, I saw a rooster standing in the chicken door. Staring at me, with a cold, calculating stare. Instantly, a fear arose in me. And for a good reason.
His neck feathers shot out into an impressive, and intimidating display, like a halo of evil from the very depths of hell. The tiny bird, not much larger than a quail, let out a blood curdling shriek and lowered his head, with that icy gaze staring directly into my eyes. I was so scarred that I dropped the egg basket, eggs breaking on the floor, and began to make good on my escape. He flew at me at the exact time my left foot lost traction on the raw egg. I slipped, flat onto my back, as the rooster was upon me. He attacked me with all the bravado of a heavyweight prizefighter, slashing at my arms, my face, my back with spurs soo sharp I would have sworn they were steak knives. He beat me with his wings, as he threw kicks that would make Chuck Norris himself jealous. A blur of feathers, anger, and pure evil.
So, my lesson? A very important lesson I have carried with me my entire life? Well, I learned two lessons that day. First, never trust a bantam rooster. Second, never, and I mean NEVER, underestimate someone or something, regardless of size, because you may be tinkering with the ripcord on an ass kicking machine.
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