You’re right! You do not want to know! Let’s talk chickens instead!

The Planet Ann Arbor is at it again. In a burst of infinite wisdom, one of the councilpersons has decided that it would be a good idea to allow people to keep chickens in their yards. No roosters, mind you. They make too much noise.

I actually have some experience with chickens. Once upon a time, Mouse’s brownie leader decided that it would be a good project for each girl in the troop to keep two baby chicks for a couple weeks. Cute, right? Learning experience? Yeah. For the mom anyway. We kept them in a laundry basket. Grok grok! Didja use *my* londry baskit fer th’ li’l chiksies? Grok grok! Just a minute. [Froggy, go play on the highway!] Never mind him. Anyway, we started out keeping them in a laundry basket. Then they started to fly. I know. You’re thinking, “chickens don’t fly.” Well, not really. But they can gain enough altitude to clear the sides of the average laundry basket. So, we put some newspapers on the floor in the back room. You know, the one with the crappy carpet. Hmmm, an unintentional but good pun, eh? And put the laundry basket upside down *over* the chickens.

It was kind of fun for a while until the family of another member of the troop dropped off *her* two chickens for the weekend. And never picked them back up. I was kind of ticked off at the time but now that I look back, there was a cat at that house. A cat that had already eaten the family’s pet bird. I guess the chickens were safer here. It was only for two weeks right? Yeah, by the end of that two weeks, I think our whole house and everything in it smelled like a chicken farm! I would be out standing in line somewhere and thinking, “is that chicken farm smell stuck in my nose or do *I* smell like a chicken farm? I who take a shower at *least* once a day!” Yeesh!

I don’t know about Mouse (scroll down to the 12/02/07 entry), who is great friends with the rooster next door in Dakar, but boy, I was glad to get rid of those birds. But Mouse would’ve had a horse in the back yard if such a thing were legal on the planet A2. I’ll never forget the day the troop leader came to pick up the chickens. She had a big box all the way across the back seat in her minivan and chickens were bouncing all over inside it. She looked a little harried and I won’t say where those chickens went next. Actually, I don’t *know* but I have my suspicions. It then came out that her husband had called the city asking if they would come and arrest her or whatever, since keeping chickens *is* against city regulations. They LAUGHED! And said that they didn’t bother with those rules for two-week brownie girl scout projects!

Sorry Mouse. I don’t think that the Planet Ann Arbor is going to let us keep chickens any time soon. It seems that the chicken proposal will go the way of another proposal, quite a few years ago, to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind much if we had chickens around. Or even roosters. But then, I get up at 0-dark-30. My feelings about Indigenous People’s Day are in RGB, not B/W, i.e., I dunno. I do think, like I think the city council thinks, that they have [arguably] more important things to do. Like where to build parking structures or how many high-rise developments to approve. Etc. Ad nauseam. *Maybe* they could revisit the leaf pickup schedule?

That brownie leader was a wonderful leader and a dear friend. We had many adventures and I miss her. Of course she’s still around and we’re still friends but we are both very busy! And that is certainly not a bad thing. But I do miss the old Haisley Mafia and all those times we’d drop our kids off and stand out there in the hall and cackle and gossip until the teacher would come out and pointedly shut the door! Like, go get a life, you guys, so I can teach your children.

The image? It’s an illustration based on a photo that my bro’ sent to me a few years ago, taken by Valdemort in Paris. It was the absolute best image of the Eiffel Tower I could find anywhere, including the stock photo sites. I’m still playing with the colors, etc., which are altered to reflect traditional Mardi Gras colors, so not realistic.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.