If chickens had blogs…
…Would it look like the dotCommonweal coop?
An essay titled “Pecking order” via ALDaily, with special mention for Joe Komonchak, Jean Raber, and other chicken aficionados here, and especially Rod “Crunchy Con” Dreher, who recently had to give up his flock in a move to Philly for a job at the Templeton Foundation. (Nice timing, eh Rod?):
Watching chickens is a very old human pastime, and the forerunner of psychology, sociology and management theory. Sometimes understanding yourself can be made easier by projection on to others. Watching chickens helps us understand human motivations and interactions, which is doubtless why so many words and phrases in common parlance are redolent of the hen yard: “pecking order”, “cockiness”, “ruffling somebody’s feathers”, “taking somebody under your wing”, “fussing like a mother hen”, “strutting”, a “bantamweight fighter”, “clipping someone’s wings”, “beady eyes”, “chicks”, “to crow”, “to flock”, “get in a flap”, “coming home to roost”, “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”, “nest eggs” and “preening”.
You’ll even see that the boss cockerel tends to take possession of the highest point – the top of the heap. And the longer you watch chickens, the more you think of them as people rather than some strange alien species with feathers, beady eyes and a strange language. Squint a little as you watch them enact their various roles and you can see a brood of Sainsbury’s retail managers jockeying to maintain position.
David: St. Augustine must have spent a good deal of time observing chickens. He referred many times in his works to Christ’s image of himself as a mother hen wishing to gather her chicks under her wings (see Mt 23:37). Here’s one of them:
“Christ became weak even to the point of dying; he assumed our weak flesh in order to gether the chicks of Jerusalem under his wings, like a hen that is weakened with her little ones. We have never seen this in any other bird, not even in those which nest before our eyes, like the house sparrows, or like our annual guests, the swallows, or like storks, or various other birds which build their nests before our eyes, and sit on their eggs, and feed their young, or even like the doves we see every day. We don’t know, haven’t seen any other bird become so weak with her young. How does the hen do this? I’m talking about something well known, which occurs every day before us: how her voice grows hoarse, how her whole body becomes ruffled; how her wings droop, her feathers relax, and you see her as almost ill over her chicks. This is a mother’s love which seens to be weakness, Is this not why the Lord chose to be a hen when he said in the Scriptures: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often did I wish to gather your children to myself as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings, and you were unwilling!” But all the nations he did gather, as a hen her chicks, he who became weak for our sakes, taking flesh from us, i.e., from our human race; crucified, despised, slapped, scourged, hung on a tree, wounded with a spear. All this is the sign of a mother’s love, not of lost majesty.” (En 1 of Ps 58, 10; PL 36, 698)
Perhaps this merits an avian response to Rite Ferrone’s apian essay of last year?
BTW, I must check in on the eagles. In some seriousness, it is interesting how we find eagles (and raptors) so magnificent and wondrous to watch, and yet we are perhaps more like chickens. Raptors can only tell us so much about ourselves — monogamy and predation.
David, FYI, chickens don’t come up in the Easter Vigil. But the blessing of foods for the first meal on Easter Sunday traditionally does include eggs (see Book of Blessings #1701).
Not to worry. Because the hen has a place in the gospel, as St. Augustine notes, chickens (to use the inclusive term) are probably in the Missal elsewhere. My concordance also informs me that the name Hen means “grace” in Hebrew (cf. Zech. 6:14).
David
Benjamin Franklin thought the wild turkey was a more appropriate choice for national bird than the bald eagle. Personally I am not much in favor of raptors.
Beware of studying chickens during winter snows. It is said that Sir Francis Bacon died from an early experiment to test the effect of refrigeration on chickens…or maybe not.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20241
Does anyone remember The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, the wonderful story of Chauntecleer?
No, Joe, tell us. Does it feature chickens?
Patrick: In fact, I’ve been studying our chickens during winter snows. They need to be persuaded to go out into it, and we scrape some of it away and then spread some hay that they can scratch around in. They don’t mind the cold. On a morning when it was 13 degrees out, they were standing out in it, apparently untroubled. The combs of the roosters turn black, however, but then back to red again.
Unpleasant news on the chicken front today: When I went down to feed them this morning, I found a hen lying lethargically near the door. I moved her out of the way only to see other hens pecking at her back. When I looked closely, I found that they were tearing her flesh off–cannibalism. She had already lost a lot of feathers to pecking. Now I have to try to find out how to combat cannibalism. The bloom is off the rose.
That’s no fun. Perhaps more proof that chickens are like bloggers?
What have you done or can you do? Or should you do? It’s ugly, but if the hen as some kind of infectious disease they may be doing the proper thing to protect the coop, however brutally.
Rita
Chauntecleer = sings loud and clear, and he is a male of the chicken species. He is tricked by a fox but then tricks the fox and gets away. The Nun’s Priest is, I guess, a chaplain of some nuns, and he tells the story during Chaucer’s pilgrimage to Canterbury.
David G. is right–sick hen will start up the blood lust. Or could be a hen that has some type of injury that the others perceive as illness. Chickens are prone to a lot of foot problems.
If she gets better, you can try re-introducing her back to the flock, but hens are not a forgiving lot.
Numerous scurrilous parallels might be drawn to both women and bloggers there, but I’ll set those aside. Hope your county extension officer or a vet up on poultry and livestock will be able to help you sort it out.
Chicken management is an interesting biz, but can be frustrating when that pecking thing starts up. One reason farmers moved from free-range to cage farming.
Nature red in tooth and claw.
From what I read, the problem of pedking and eventually even cannibalizing is related to opportunities for the chickens to forage, which, of course, are fewer during the winter. We’ve segregated the two that seem in most danger, and will see how they fare. Another suggestion: put a cup of vinegar in their drinking water. I’ll try that tomorrow. But it was pretty ugly to watch. It reminded me of scenes on the African plains when hyenas start disembowelling a gazelle before it’s dead. Almost sounds like the English….
Hyenas have to eat fast before they’re run off by larger and more powerful animals. Yeah, hard to watch, but it’s not gratuitious cruelty on their part. For that you need humans,and if we’re going to drag ethnicity into it, I think we hardly need limit it to the English.
Jean: I was thinking of the “hung, drawn and quartered” aspects of religious punishment. I’ve never heard that torture used in another context. But, on the other hand, there was our friend “Vlad the …”
Hanging, drawing, and quartering was first implemented by Edward I of England, a Catholic, and was reserved for treason. Heretics were burned throughout Europe and England; Mary Tudor used it as a way to reduce her Protestant problem.
After Mary’s death, priests who had fled the country and returned from France or Spain were automatically suspect of treason, and many were executed this way.
In general, religious creeds seem to have been no deterrent to the human inventiveness that dreams up these horrors to do away with misfits, cranks, trouble-makers, and other perceived enemies of the state.
One need look no further than the cross.
Good luck with the chickens.
So you have Protestant chickens mixed in with the Catholics, Joe? That’s either ecumenical or dangerous of you.