The Free Range Chickens


These are three hens, free-ranging out in the field after a long
hot day in the shade of my patio. They are supposed to be
next door, but have been here for about a week.

The New Yorker had a cartoon by Roz Chast this week,
which was all about my visiting chickens! The balloon-thoughts coming
out of their cockly pea-brains were something like, "There's a whole
world out there! Let's go take it on, girls!" ....my thoughts exactly,
watching this trio buck-buck around the yard. If I ran at them, to chase
them, they would turn toward me and run past me in the opposite
direction. If I led them, they would follow. If I wasn't paying any attention
to them, they scratched up my scrawny pansies and marigolds.

I wrote a story about my neighbor's chickens a few years ago...
It is called My Feathered Friend....