I was bothered then by how stupid this woman from the City was when it came to chickens. I suppose I should have realized that anyone who has chickens in an apartment in Manhattan is stupid to begin with, but some of the stuff this woman says in her article...Seriously. You don't have to have raised chickens like we did when I was a kid to know that ALL chickens are female, right?
It was this point that really started to bother me the other day when I was in the kitchen washing dishes. My mind tends to wander when I'm doing dishes and it wandered back to this article. And I just wanted some confirmation that it doesn't take proximity to chickens to know that to have baby chickens one needs a ROOSTER, right?
Key excerpts from the article below:
We decided that Cheep was a girl, with that bouffant hairdo that made her look twice her size, and Chirp was a boy, because he was the epitome of the gallant male.
About six months after their arrival, I was in my office, just back from a meeting, picking up my messages. “Mom, there’s something wrong with Cheep. She’s sitting in a corner and won’t come out. She’s making all this noise and I can’t get her to stop.” On the second call, Isabella was holding back tears. “Mom, she’s really in pain. Please come home. I think she may be dying.” Third call, a completely new tone in her voice, at once serene, excited and very proud: “Mom, I can now confirm that Cheep is a girl.”
She had laid an egg, right on top of the pile of newspapers I can never quite keep up with, while Chirp paced nervously up and down beside her. When I came home that night, Isabella, beaming, held out the miraculous object, cradled in her hands. It was a delicate sandy rose, worthy of a Farrow & Ball paint chip.
Then, a week later, to our great surprise, Chirp laid an egg, also choosing the newspaper pile for the occasion. Suddenly, we had to revise our whole concept. We had two female chickens, which meant no babies (only fertilized eggs can grow into chicks).
Apparently she never learns that roosters are the males. Idiot.
Other annoying tidbits from the article:
— Who knew chickens could fly? (You can see how little time I’ve spent in barnyards.)
— Intriguing fact: chickens like to sleep standing up. Ours invariably nodded off right next to each other.
6 comments:
I didn't raise chickens growing up, so I have to ask: isn't it totally disgusting to live with chickens in your home???? (Like your chicken art.)
Sorry- I mean, I LIKE your chicken image. I wasn't trying to say that your chicken picture was disgusting.
Yes! Chickens are totally gross creatures. They poop everywhere and unlike bunnies, their poop does not come in little round, hard balls. It splats just like all other bird poop. [I am on an intimate basis with bird poop because when I was little my mom and I had to shovel out the chicken coop and then transport said bird poop to her garden.]
Plus, as I mentioned, chickens are birds and as YOU know (though not this woman apparently) bird crap is very, very bad stuff. It carries all kinds of disease and bacteria that are bad for humans. Very, very bad.
And they are not little twerpy birds. You can just change their newspaper. You need to put on some gloves and a little face mask (like the doctors use) to clean that stuff up.
I mean, I had a pet chicken named Sally, but she lived outside. You know, that place where chickens live.
So the article is basically an advertisement of her stupidity. And she wrote it, right? Ugh. I wonder if any kind of agency, like child welfare, will contact her.
http://www.wikihow.com/Keep-Chickens-in-a-City
She should have read this first.
I suppose their tag line — "Chickens can turn slugs and kitchen scraps into fertilizer and eggs. Magic and fun!" — is to make me WANT to raise chickens, right?
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