Our one week of winter was cold while it lasted. Now this past week has been mostly above freezing during the day and not much below freezing at night. The outdoor skating rinks that the city finally opened a week ago are closed already because they are a soupy mess. Even the National Pond Hockey tournament that is held every year on my neighborhood lake has been cancelled. 

On the plus side, the warm weather, lack of snow, and lengthening days, now allow the chickens to be let out for a short bit when I get home from work. The week has been so gray and gloomy that I didn’t expect them to be out long, maybe 15 – 20 minutes at most, I was wrong. I look out in the not quite full dark garden, and there they all are, still roaming around in the gloaming. 

I give them another five minutes, put on my coat, and go out to put them to bed in the coop only to find them all standing around in the run. Come on girls, time for bed! I chirp. They stand around complaining like kids, Aw Mom, can’t we stay up just a little longer? Then I start cajoling. Who’s going to be first? Who’s going to lead the way and show everyone how it’s done? 

They clump around the ladder ramp into the coop and begin looking up at it. I start calling them by name. That’s right Lucy, you go first, lead the way! But Lucy isn’t buying it. How about you Mrs.? You’re looking tired. C’mon Sia, show them how it’s done. Ethel is underneath the ladder in a corner and Elinor is underneath the coop.

Finally, one of them jumps up on the ladder, usually Sia and then Mrs. Dashwood. Suddenly Lucy decides it is imperative that she get in the coop right now, and jumps in the middle of the two already on the ladder and tries to shove her way past whoever is in front of her. Then there is a squabble at the coop door as Lucy and the other chicken both try to go in at the same time. Lucy is slightly bigger than Mrs. D and Sia and generally manages to push whoever it is out of the way.

Once Sia and Mrs. D get in the coop they stand in the door, poking their heads out, calling to Ethel and Elinor. Ethel then begins her torturous decision making process. She is at the bottom of the pecking order and is terrified of Elinor. If Elinor is standing anywhere near the ladder, Ethel tries all sorts of unworkable angles and approaches to get up there without having to go near Elinor. Finally she is more desperate to get into the coop than she is afraid of Elinor, and jumps onto the ladder almost right in front of the coop door. It is an inelegant maneuver that involves much wing flapping and squealing. 

Once she is up there she can’t get into the coop because Sia and Mrs. D are blocking the door and Lucy is pushed up right behind them. If Ethel tries to push her way in, she will inevitably get pecked. Since I am standing there, I gently push everyone in the coop out of the way giving Ethel room to hurry in and jump up on the roost out of the way.

Now it is almost full dark and Elinor stands there looking at the ladder, at Mrs. D and Sia who are back at the coop door calling her in, at me, and then gazing out into space as though she has no idea what’s going on and that we are all waiting for her.

But when she finally decides she wants to go in the coop she hesitates. She moves to jump and then doesn’t, and repeats it over and over. When she jumps up at last, about a foot off the ground, and starts walking up the ladder, it is not a casual stroll like everyone else, but one of flapping and hesitation and, this is hard and I might fall. 

Elinor is a sassy, independent lady who does what she wants in her own time and if James or I try to impose our ideas on her she will give us a good hard peck to the back of the hand or back of the knee. In winter when we are wearing thick gloves and pants, this is not bad. In summer, it hurts like heck, and both James and I have had bruises and lost some skin to her. She is also the largest chicken in the flock. A Rhode Island Red, she weighs about six pounds. The others range from four to five pounds. When Elinor jumps down from the ladder she makes an audible thud.

Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood are from our first flock of four. Marianne and Margaret both died a few years ago. Elinor and Mrs. will be eight-years-old at the end of March. The average backyard chicken lifespan is six years, but just like people, each chicken gets different mileage and 8-10 years, sometimes longer, is possible. 

Neither of the Dashwoods are spring chickens any longer, which left me wondering if Elinor’s ladder hesitation is age-related. Thinking it might be, I decided to help her out, and picked her up and put her at the top of the ladder in front of the coop door. I expected to get a peck for my trouble, but she flapped her wings to shuffle her feathers back into place, and with great chicken dignity, went into the coop. 

I’ve helped her out a couple times now, but the other night she was already in the coop while a few of the others were still wandering around. So now I’m wondering if she is pulling one over on me and just being cantankerous until I lose patience and pick her up. She could be playing the long game, lulling me into thinking she likes me to pick her up, and then as soon as it is warm enough and I am not wearing gloves, she will take her revenge with a good hard peck that draws blood. It’s entirely possible. That’s the sort of chicken she is. I love her all the more because of it.

Reading

• Book: Worlds of Exile and Illusion by Ursula K Le Guin. This is a 3-in-1 collection of the first three novels Le Guin published. I will swear to all the directions that I have not read them before, but at the same time, it seems like I have. Maybe I’ve just heard enough about them? Or maybe they have such (now) common sci-fi tropes that they feel utterly familiar? They are not great books, though maybe they were at the time in the 60s and early 70s. I am glad I read them though because I can see the seeds of later Le Guin.
• Article: Could a Court Really Order the Destruction of ChatGPT? Oh, y’all, The New York Times filed suit against OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT for copyright violation. ChatGPT will give word-for-word results taken directly from NYT articles without attribution. So the Times is not just asking for copyright violation damages, but they are asking that everything from the NYT used to train the AI be removed. If the court sides with the Times, this will force OpenAI to delete all of its training data, which would also prevent the company from rebuilding the AI. Juicy!
• Article: Tom Dispatch: Trump 2.0. If you think Donald Trump would only be a dictator on day one of his administration, you are so many kinds of wrong.

Listening

Nothing new or especially noteworthy this week.

Watching

• Movie: Nimona. I read and loved the graphic novel back when it first came out in 2015 and I had no idea it had been made into a movie and is up for an Oscar for best animated feature film. I found out about it last week from a coworker, so had to watch it, and all I can say is, it had better win the Oscar! It’s the sort of movie that has a lot to say but does it in a fun way and makes you feel good and happy at the end.

Quote

For to an aggressive people only technology mattered.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Rocannon’s World in Worlds of Exile and Illusion, page 29

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

The wizarding got a bit dull this last week, but James pulled it out of it’s tailspin Friday night when he made butternut squash and chick pea pizza. Then he topped it for Saturday night’s dinner when he made burger fries—homemade baked fries topped with crumbled homemade burgers, kale, homemade cheesy sauce, and homemade sauerkraut. The kraut is pink because we had some purple cabbage that got added to the green cabbage kraut and turned it all pink—isn’t it fun?