GET THE COOP

Dear Spike:

It's not like we've got a lack of things to do around here. Your mother is busy finishing up the school year — testing her students, writing report cards and preparing lessons for next year. I'm trying to ballance my stay-at-home dad duties with my part of the put-food-on-our-plate duties, am looking for a publisher for the book I wrote you for Christmas (but which, as further evidence of how busy we've been, I didn't finish until last week,) and am already way behind at applying for graduate school.

We've got a garden to weed, grapevines to tend and a fat, fluffy cat who often seems to need more attention than you.

Oh yeah — you. Every time I turn around you've got something new in your mouth. You've developed a frightening fascination with electrical cords. I think you've got some Sherpa in your blood, because yesterday you managed to scale half-way up your dresser before I noticed and pulled you down. And it seems like you learn two or three new words a day. Today alone, you picked up "tickle" and "chicken."

That's right "chicken."

As in: "What we've decided to raise in the backyard because — you know what? — we just don't have enough going on around here!"

I'm not sure how it all got started. One minute your mother and I were discussing things we'd like to do if we had more time on our hands and the next minute I was in the basement, staring at your old changing table, trying to figure out how to make it into a chicken coop.

For the record, I did indeed make a chicken coop out of your changer (and also an old desk that I picked up at an estate sale last year and some wood from a packing crate I got from our neighbor.) I'm like the Bob Vila of poultry.

And then, yesterday, your mother and I packed you into the car, swung over to pick up your Auntie Sue, and headed for the farm store, where we picked out three baby chicks, packed them into a little box, and then headed back home. Your mom named the black one "Wanda." Sue, who apparently likes her chicken fried with 11 yummy herbs and spices, named the smallest one of the bunch "The Colonel." And you called the third one "Bubba."

That's right, "Bubba." You're pretty funny, kid.

Right now, they're all sleeping together, under a lamp, in a box, in our dining room. Apparently we can't put them outside yet, so I guess I didn't need to break my back rushing to get the coop ready yesterday.

None of this makes any sense. After all, we're not exactly farm people. The closest thing I've ever had to livestock were a couple of parakeets that I tried to get to breed when I was 11 or 12 years old. They never even nested and then, one day in the dead of winter, they somehow managed to escape.

And its not like eggs are prohibitively expensive. Most of the time, you can get a dozen big ones for about $1.25. That's about a dime per egg. There's really not a better deal than that in the entire grocery store.

But a few weeks ago I was giving this subject some thought, and I realized that you were pretty much destined to be a city kid. And even though I grew up in the suburbs, where the only chickens I ever saw were already dead, plucked and packed in celophane, I somehow started getting nostalgic for the "good old days," when people had a better connection to the things that land on their plate. And since I don't think the neighbors would be too happy if we tried to raise our own cows, chicken eggs seemed like a good place to start.

It's been more than 24 hours, now, and I'm not suffering from buyer's remorse yet. In fact, I 'm sort of starting to like the little girls, enough so that when I noticed that Bubba seemed a little bit on the wobbly side, I started to feel a bit sad at the thought that she might not make it.

But anyway, it's not like we've gone and made another human. I mean, the nice thing about chickens is that if you ever get tired of them, you can just eat them.

We're not allowed to do that with you.

Love,
dad