Dilemmas

I have a bloody scar curving down across my left eyebrow. This wound was delivered with surprising severity earlier this afternoon by Snowball, one of our 3 turkeys. One minute she was cooing at me in a slightly odd voice I’d never heard before – she’d hopped up on a boulder to be near me as I hung a blanket out on the line to sun dry – and as I bent closer, stroking her white feathery breast and asking her “what’s the matter?”, she lunged at me, inflicting the gash. Thinking she was out of sorts, I went around to embrace and hold her – a fairly common practice, nothing out of the ordinary – and she went for the skin between my thumb and index finger. And held on. Tight. Later, as I dabbed peroxide and Neosporin on my slash mark, I concluded that she must’ve thought my eyebrow was a caterpillar and my finger a worm. My next thought was “Well, this makes eating her at Thanksgiving a little easier.”

Okay, wait. Much like the Samarai are admonished not to fight when angry, I don’t want to eat Snowflake for revenge. And I don’t want to cast eating Snowflake for Thanksgiving in a comic light. This is a dilemma. We have gotten close to all the turkeys, we’ve named them (I know, bad move. We were counseled against it, many times.) AND we’ve named our chickens and roosters. “Processing” them will be in their futures too. This is one of the many dilemmas I’ve found about living on some semblance of a farm and raising animals that you intend to eat. I think that’s why I was so against Richard getting chickens and geese and turkeys in the first place because something inside of me knew that I would be the big softie when it came to wrestling with the predicament of to eat or not to eat, to kill or not to kill. Richard’s a sweetie, he loves all his animals, but don’t be fooled by his angelic disposition; he’s got cold steel flowing through his veins. Remember, he shot a Canada gosling in cold blood! A bullet to its head! At close range!! Okay, granted, it was a mercy killing. It had been injured, it needed to be done away with, but still, he did it! You think he’s losing sleep over whether or not to eat one of the turkeys?! Not on your life. This is a man who named a couple of his chickens “Puddin’ Pie” and “Dumpling” last year.

And there’s the geese. Another dilemma. Not that we’re thinking about eating any of them. No, not on your life, we’re agreed on that. BUT we’re seriously thinking of getting rid of them. There’s really no reason to have them. Richard’s had the experience, he sees that he enjoys chickens and turkeys much more. And they serve no purpose, they provide no product like eggs (well, okay, for 2 months. But just try to get one without getting nipped at.). They poop all over the place. Schmuel harangues and scolds us (well, me. He’s sweet as all get out to Richard. Schmuel and I got off on the wrong foot. I try to be nice to him, but he sees me coming, and his head goes down, and his neck goes out, followed by a banshee screech which sets the others off in a crazed sort of Greek chorus. But I digress.) Richard and I made a mental list of pros and cons regarding the geese the other day and we filled the con side, FILLED IT. Not a pro. And yet … our hearts melt seeing them swimming on the pond. They are so beautiful over there, a floating haiku, a meditation. It’s ridiculous. Ugh. We’re suckers. Richard has listed the 3 young uns on Craig’s List, but other than a few nibbles, nada.

And getting back to turkeys, Richard just hatched 6 new babies! And they are adorable and imprinted on us, but where are they going to go this winter? The 3 adult turkeys have been taking up space in the chicken coop ever since the raccoon attack and, yes, will probably be gone come Thanksgiving and Christmas (I just shuddered, honestly), but those 6 are going to take up a LOT of room as they fatten up all winter. And come Spring, who’s going to want them? No one eats turkey in the spring. It’s ham or lamb. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe we could disguise them, cover them in wool, teach them other kind of animal calls and people will be none the wiser.

Richard’s going to a Chicken Swap on Sunday, a quaint get together in these parts. He doesn’t actually “swap” his chickens. He gets in there, sells what he has, and skedaddles. The last two times he’s been there, it’s been a quick success. This time he really is trying to clear some space in the coop AND get rid of a few trouble makers. Too many roosters around. Oh, and I just thought of another dilemma. Today, just before leaving for work, Richard informed me that Pearl, a white hen of ours, was starting to go broody and if ever I saw her on a nest sitting on eggs or spending an inordinate amount of time crouching down on the coop floor, I was to scat her outside. Well, sure enough, when I went out to collect eggs midday, there she was, sitting, hunched over 2 eggs, that glassy, broody look coming over her eyes while outside the weather was glorious. I gathered the eggs and with a “C’mon, Pearl, time to get out in the day!” reached beneath her and tossed her out into the grass. I felt as if I were shoving a depressed person in robe and curlers out the door of an asylum. “Get out there! It’s good for you! Enough shock therapy!!” And to add insult to injury, the moment she hit the ground, still dazed in a broody high, Major, our Australorp, hopped on her and humped her. Sorry, Pearl.

I seemed to have needed to get all this off my chest. I feel much better now. My wound is clotting nicely. The turkeys are busying themselves with some havoc in the backyard. The geese are across the road getting ready for another chapter of their pond choreography. Of course they’ve waited until it’s the most perfect time of day to embark, the sunlight dusting off the leaves that are just thinking of turning color. They’ll ease out onto the surface of the water and barely, imperceptibly create a ripple. And they’ll look as if they’re fully concentrated on what they’re doing, but those geese, they’re tricky, they look at you out of the side of their head, when they’re in perfect profile, and they can see that once more they’ve melted my heart. And there they go.

Okay, they can stay.

Snowball’s days, however, are numbered.