Super Duper Pooper Stupor

Saturday I went out into the light drizzle and fed the chickens. Whenever they see a human, they start up a righteous cackling. Not the cackling of the fine-feathered matrons of River City, but a horrendous bird-brained racket. No pick-a-little talk-a-little pick-a-little talk-a-little cheep-cheep-cheep talk-a-lot pick-a-little-more backed by the Buffalo Bills singing Go-o-ood Ni-i-ight Ladie-e-es in euphonious barbershop harmony, but instead ten harsh throats going ka-kaaa and pa-kaaa and pe-kreee with absolutely no musical or aesthetic sense whatsoever.

They rushed the gate as I ducked in, but I sent them scurrying. I picked my way to the feed can across a slippery slope of inch-thick mud and chicken shit hoping to God none of them managed to trip me, and tossed them a few cupfuls of laying pellets. They ignored me from that point and fell to like the ravenous omnivores they are; and just like certain other denizens of this planet, even though there was plenty enough for everyone, there had to be one or two who just couldn't let others have any at all, not if they could help it anyway.

Thus occupied, they didn't interfere with my egg hunt. I found four. This is not a productive time of year for chickens cooped up under a leafless oak tree in the dead of winter. Two of the eggs were truly disgusting. Probably all right to eat, but the shells were so enormously filthy I just couldn't bring myself to take them to the house. They were crusted with chicken crap and stained with brown liquids that looked like the bloody execrations of a very sick animal. Rather than bring these pestilential objects into the kitchen, I tossed them to the ground for the chickens to consume. But they didn't break: they just went thud. I picked them up and threw them down: thud. I tried again with greater force. Thud again, leaving egg-shaped indentations in the wet ordurous earth. Truly the eggshell is among Nature's finer feats of engineering. Finally I wanged 'em against an upright support and they cracked, and their mothers and aunts rushed to the scene like cannibals after the missionary's daughter and they were gone. I took the other two with me, closed the gate, and left. I left my shoes in the garage before going inside.

Later, I had to go somewhere, and was met when putting those shoes back on with a most arresting combination of olfactory experiences. I decided the shoes needed cleaning. I cleaned them as shoes are best cleaned: with a walk across a wet lawn. I kept going, through the weeds and across the sodden lot to the property line, where I noticed one of my neighbor's trees had been knocked over by the great wind of a week ago. If I had a working chainsaw I'd work him a deal for firewood, but I don't, so I walked back and got in my Jeep and went and did whatever. Whatever became whatnot, and then this and then that and then the other thing, and I moved on into other stages of life, until tonight when it all came back to me in a pungent rush as I drove home from work and understood what it means to allow the slightest amount of mud and excrement to curl up the side of your shoe and escape the cleansing effects of damp grass, only to flake off onto your truck's floorboards and develop a finely matured fragrance over the course of a sunny winter's day. By the time I got home I was fairly giddy with it. Good night, ladies!