vituperation

It’s coming:

Ichiban eggplant

Jalapeno

Habanero

Female yellow crookneck squash flower bud

I know you probably have answered this question before….but what kind of camera are you using to take these excellent pictures.

It’s a Sony alpha 100 (a100h or a100k, I can’t remember which right now) DSLR.

How in the world is your garden so perfect with just you working it?

It’s because I spend an obscene amount of time on it.

I misspoke in a previous entry. A female chicken is only called a pullet for one year, not two. Our older girls are all hens now.

Also, our other hen hatched her five eggs. Our pretty buff hen has five little black babies. How’s that for dedication?

I lay in my bed in the darkened room, one leg curled up so I could poke and prod at my foot, exploring the limits of a new pain that suddenly appeared in both feet about a week ago. Outside, rain beat gently on the roof, creating a soothing hiss. Next to me, our cat Tom Cullen writhed in ecstasy on the bedclothes. Some mornings — like today — when I get up early to pee, I let him come back into the bedroom with me to keep me company until it’s time to get up. There’s nothing he enjoys more than flinging himself around on the bed, rubbing himself on the textured comforter.

A noise from outside interrupted my sleepy exploration and jerked me to full wakefulness. I froze, listening intently until I heard it again.

Chickens. Screaming.

I leapt from the bed, hissing with the pain when my feet hit the floor, and hobbled around the end of it. As I snatched my clothes off the end of the bed, my mind took me back to Friday afternoon, and the horrible thing I’d said.

Chickens, as I’ve mentioned before, are obscenely stupid. When our first hen hatched her babies a couple of weeks ago, she went under the coop with them for the first three or four nights. Last Wednesday, she went into the coop for the night, and only two of the chicks had the brains to follow her up the ramp. Robyn and I caught the last three pretty easily and put them in with mom.

On Thursday, I was alone and the chicks were onto me. It took me about 20 minutes to get them all into the coop, but I was eventually able to do it. On Friday, it took me 15 minutes to get four into the coop. After 15 minutes trying to catch the last shrieking chick, I gave up and let the mother hen and the other four back out.

Furious, I went back inside and told Robyn: “I give up. I hope something DOES eat them for being so goddamn stupid.”

I shuffled down the stairs in my underwear, clothes clutched in one hand. I used the other hand for the railing, so I could take a little weight off my feet. I hobbled into the den, waking Robyn, who was sleeping in a recliner in front of the TV.

“Something’s in with the chickens,” I said as I punched the buttons to turn off the alarm.

I dressed and went out the side door briefly to see if the 500-watt motion sensitive lights would show me anything. I couldn’t see a thing out there, but I sure could hear an alarmed chicken.

Back into the house, grabbing the sixteen million candlepower spotlight as I passed through the computer room, and on to the back door.

Wait. Stop.

I didn’t know what was out there.

Through the house to the front room, where I fetched a .38 revolver loaded with hollow points.

Rain cascaded off the roof, soaking me as I went down the concrete steps into the back yard. I flipped the switch on the spotlight, turning a swath of night into noonday. I hoisted the light up onto my shoulder — sixteen million candlepower makes for a hefty light — and pointed it into the chicken yard.

I could see the mother hen, perfectly still in the beam of light. I looked beyond her, but couldn’t see anything. Moving as quickly as I could, I crossed the back yard and went through the gate into the chicken yard, playing the light back and forth as I went. From time to time the light glinted off larger drops of rain, making me think I’d spotted an eye.

I rounded the side of the coop, and saw it in the glare of the spotlight. A raccoon, shambling along the fence in that familiar hunching gait they have. A limp brown chick hung from his mouth.

I raised the gun, took the best aim I could, and squeezed the trigger.

When the vast majority of your shooting is done within the confines of a shooting range, where you’re wearing hearing protection, you tend to forget just how loud a gun is. It’s nothing like the pop pop! cap gun sound in a movie, it’s like having someone smack both your ears with open palms. The roar from the gun set my ears ringing, and caused the raccoon to reverse direction like a tin duck in a shooting gallery.

I aimed a second time and squeezed the trigger, wondering what Robyn must be thinking inside the house. Wondering what any neighbors close enough to hear might think. The raccoon didn’t slow, but found a depression in the ground and wriggled under the fence and out of sight. I must say that from fifty feet, in the dark, with rain falling, using one hand to aim at a moving target while the other balanced a spotlight, it would have been nothing short of a miracle if I’d hit him.

I set the revolver down on the coop steps, out of the rain, and got on my hands and knees to look under the coop for chicks. I saw none. I did a quick chick check around the yard with the spotlight. Again, none. Mother hen still stood motionless at the corner of the coop, so I plucked her from the ground, opened the door, and set her inside.

Back inside the house, I told Robyn about the raccoon while I changed into my normal outside clothes. We wondered if anyone would call the sheriff because of the gunfire and decided they probably wouldn’t since it’s legal to shoot your gun in your yard where we live, though it’s generally frowned upon at 4:30 in the morning.

When I went out to feed the pigs a few minutes later, I stopped in the chicken yard to listen for frightened chicks. I heard nothing. I waited until it was a little lighter than usual to let the chickens out, figuring that would make better odds for the raccoon being gone. As I showered, I thought about how depressing it would be when I left for work, to see mother hen walking around the yard alone, forlornly doing her come-here-babies cluck.

But when I went out, there were two babies with her.