Telling Your Story
I thought I was the queen of the chicken coop. A cute kitchen towel declares me as the keeper of chickens, a literal chicken tender. I'm supposed to be in charge, the queen of the coop.
Harriet had other plans.
Meet Harriet, the real queen of the coop.
Some days, she meets me at the door. It could be a casual hello, cocking her head and looking up at me with one beady eye. She checks which bucket is in my hand. Is it the grain bucket or is it the vegetable scrap bucket? Maybe even both? Identifying the bucket is her signal for which direction to run. Should she go to the feeder for the daily layer mash or race out the chicken run door where delightful potato peels, watermelon rind and apple cores await a flock of hens who believe they are being purposely deprived of culinary variety.
Most days, you will find Harriet hoarding all the eggs she has convinced her flock mates to lay in one single box. There are 19 other boxes, but Harriet has convinced her roommates that this one box is magical, that it is the only suitable box to deposit their precious eggs. Harriet insists on clean feet and a pre-trip to the chicken toilet before entering its enchanted space. I am certain she inspects and questions each fowl under her hypnotic orders for cleanliness before they are allowed to add to her collection. She keeps her space clean and well organized.
Once a nice sized array has been placed, she settles in on her future imaginary family, clucking and cooing, puffing her feathers to keep her eggs warm but mostly showing off to the barren women of the flock that she alone holds the key to motherhood in this coop.
Eventually, I show up with a basket, thank her for her fostering instinct, remind her there is no daddy there to provide for her imagined family and proceed to remove her future family. It's good that she doesn't know or understand the fate of her imagined family—fried, poached, deviled, scrambled, quiche or boiled.
Harriet scolds when I take her hoard, but in spite of her threats, she never pecks but politely steps aside and allows me to remove her familyagain. She is already preparing for a new hoard, calling her hen posse to return to her haven so her dreams of motherhood don't disappear.
You've got to admire her persistence. This hen desperately wants to be a momma, or so she thinks.
It would be fun to slip a hatched chick under her, except that the rest of the flock would destroy the intruder minutes after its discovery. I don't think even Harriet could fight them all off.
Harriet has replaced me as queen of the coop, and I relinquish my title. In so doing, however, I wish she would learn to buy feed, fill and clean the waterers, and maybe clean out the rest of the coop. Queen of the coop title comes with a few more responsibilities than taste testing and egg warming.
Bev Berens is a freelance writer and empty nester from Vestaburg, Mich. She can be contacted at uphillfarm494@yahoo.com.