My Million-Dollar Donkey (16 page)

Kathy took a test every few months to check her reading level, and after two years of lessons, she was reading at the third grade level. I was told the newspaper is written for a fifth grade mentality, so I started thinking reading the news wouldn’t be too far a stretch for her.

“Do you know what’s in a newspaper?” I asked one day.

“News?”

“Well, yes. The Atlanta paper has national coverage, but our smaller, local paper has mostly information about our community. I thought you might want to start reading the paper so I bought you a subscription.”

She sat up in her seat.

“All newspapers are set up the pretty much the same. The front page is the big news.”

I read her the headlines and paraphrased the news.

• The mayor had been arrested three times for cockfights and people were clamoring that he should be given more than a small fine.
  

• There were yellow ribbons all around town because one of our local boys died in Iraq and his body was being shipped home for the funeral on Sunday.
  

• Town councilors were lifting the alcohol ban and giving pouring licenses to select businesses outside the city limits in hopes of jump-starting the flagging economy.
  

I turned to the second page, and pointed out the arrests reports, explaining what they were.

Kathy’s face grew ashen. “Does that mean my name was in the paper the year I was arrested?”

“I suppose so.”

She bit her lip. “I had no idea information like that was printed for the world to see. Doesn’t seem very respectful.”

“I think you lose your right to privacy when you break the law,” I mumbled, turning to the editorials. “This is where people write letters to share their opinion on community and world events.” I read a few of the heated letters, two of which were taking opposing sides on a local signage law.

Kathy pursed her lips. “Those two letters say the exact opposite things.”

“A newspaper doesn’t take sides, at least in theory. The editor prints everyone’s opinion so readers will be exposed to different views. By hearing all sides of an issue, people can come to their own conclusions. Which side of this issue strikes you as fair?”

She waved a hand in front of her face. “I don’t know. Let the politicians take care of running things, I always say.”

“But we pick the politicians, so how things are run is a result of our choices. Ever vote?”

“Naw. Nobody in my family has ever voted.”

“Maybe if you start reading the paper, you will vote someday.”

“I don’t even think I’m allowed, having been arrested and all.” “We should find out.” I flipped another page, turning to the obituaries.

“Is everybody listed in the paper when they die?” she asked. “Someone has to submit the information to the paper first.”

“I guess my mom’s name wasn’t listed then,” she said, her fingers tracing the picture of a deceased woman. “I wish I had known to do that.”

“Next time someone close to you passes away, you will be able to send in an obituary.”

“Yeah...” She sighed. “But nobody will know how to do that for me. Ain’t nobody in my family understands such things.”

“You never know. Things change. Look at how much you’re learning.”

She nodded, but did not look convinced.

On the community events page, we learned of a free bluegrass concert, a bird watching lecture, and the two-dollar pancake breakfast for the Shriners. Social services were also listed, such as the Empty Stocking program helping disadvantaged families get Christmas presents, and the health clinic giving free flu shots.

We reviewed the TV and movie listings, compared prices in grocery ads, and read about the animals up for adoption at the local animal rescue. Kathy seemed only mildly interested until I got to the classifieds. She leaned in closer.

“They list jobs? I thought the newspaper only had news.”

“Think of the paper as an information source, rather than just news. The paper is entertainment as well,” I said, pulling out a page I’d saved from the Atlanta paper’s Sunday comics. “I thought for fun we could read the funnies today.” I pointed to a comic called “Kathy,” hoping the name would amuse her.

She leaned over and started sounding out the text, but the sentences unfolded so slowly the humor was lost.

“Do you know why the words are written in those little white bubbles?” I said.

She sat back in her seat looking overwhelmed. “I have no clue.”

“See the way the bubble points to a character’s mouth? That’s because the bubble represents a voice. When little dots go from the bubble to a character’s head, the writing is a thought. You can follow the conversation without ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ tags this way.”

“Well, that’s certainly clever. Whoever thought of using bubbles for a voice must have been really smart.”

“I suppose.”

The rest of the day I couldn’t stop thinking about the innovative artist who came up with idea of bubble captions rather than putting text under the picture. Was the innovative artist renowned for his contribution in the world of funnies, or did other artists just copy his gimmick until everyone had forgotten where the original idea came from? Perhaps cartoon bubbles just evolved over time. Why had I never thought about or noticed these things before? I took cartoons, like so many other things in life, for granted. Since meeting Kathy, I was seeing the world with fresh eyes. I left feeling grateful that day— for newspapers, for comics, and for a reading student who taught as much as she learned.

After a year of trial and error and the loss of at least a hundred young birds, I finally had eight full-grown chickens mature enough to start laying. I was determined to keep them alive.

I installed a bigger pen for my birds, burying the fencing into the ground so nothing could burrow underneath and since I now understood these eight birds may not ever make it to maturity, I ordered additional chicks online from a poultry company, the most cost-effective way to buy chicks, according to Ronnie.

If you’ve never done this yourself, I should warn you that Internet poultry shopping is dangerous, especially when your ten-year-old daughter is sitting next to you expressing little gasps of delight every time you add a different baby chick to your spring hatchery order.

Neva had been pining for the chickens with wispy fur-like feathers (Silkies) ever since her all-time favorite chick had become a cat snack, so I ordered half a dozen, along with the twelve Leghorn super egg layers I wanted for myself. We were both enchanted by Frizzles, so I thought I might as well get a few of that breed, too. Might as well get some fancy Cochins for diversity, and I don’t have any green egg layers so I should probably throw in a few Ameraucanas. What are those cool things? Sultans? Gotta get a few of those crazy looking birds...well, you can see how things escalate. Before you know it, you’ve ordered 68 baby chicks.

A few weeks later, the post office called to tell me a box from a poultry house had been delivered. Clearing his throat, the postmaster said I may have a problem because the box was oddly quiet.

I rushed to the post office, drove home quickly to open the package, only to find 58 dead chicks lying in the synthetic grass like lifeless Easter peeps. The few birds that had survived were huddled under the dead bodies as if they’d pulled their friends over them for a blanket. Devastated, I called the company and was told the chicks must have gotten a chill.

“These things happen,” they said, promising to replace the order.

I didn’t necessarily want another order. I wanted to sue for mental anguish. Do you know how horrible opening a package is when you anticipate cute chicks and instead find tiny carcasses? The guilt was crushing.

“We’re going to send you a few extra chicks next time, just in case,” the woman said.

Quickly, I put the remaining live chicks in a box with a warming light. It was a chilly day, so I covered the plastic tub with a towel thinking they would appreciate a toasty environment. If nothing else, I might head off potential chick pneumonia. What I didn’t know was that a cover would make the temperature inside the box spike. An hour later the remaining chicks were now dead, too. Not from the cold. Nope. I had cooked them.

Naturally, I went to bed and cried myself to sleep.

When Mark came home he said, “What gives?”

“Because of me, 68 innocent chickens are dead.”

He tried not to laugh. “I know how badly you want to raise chickens so we can eat organically like the family in that book you are reading,
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
. Maybe everything you are learning lately will help you write your own bestseller.” A mischievous smile curled about his lips. “We’ll call yours
Animal, Vegetable, Funeral
.”

A few days later, my replacement chicks arrived. Another sixty-eight adorable live peeps in a single box with a few extra birds for good measure. I carefully removed the perky, chirping chicks, only to discover a few random baby chick pancakes on the floor of the box. Five chicks had been crushed during the mailing cycle, and three more by the time we reached home. I felt badly for them, but at least I didn’t feel as guilty as if I had dropped a dictionary on their heads.

I cared for the helpless birds with diligence. Newborn chicks are only about the size of a soft golf ball. But they grow. And they grow fast. When placing my order, I wasn’t thinking about where I would house 68 chickens for the months
before
they were ready to be released into the main pen. I was simply thinking that, predators be damned, I’d get enough chickens to assure survivors so I’d have egg layers six months hence.

I now had over 60 healthy baby chicks peeping away in two cages by my desk. In a week, they were hearty enough to move into the garage where the temperature was less controlled, but because they were growing so quickly, I had to divide them into four groups. This required my buying more lights, water bottles, feed troughs, and cages. So much for my cost effective plan for buying chickens
en masse
.

Two months later, I had to move the growing birds into a bigger pen again, so I fenced a corner of my permanent pen as a holding area for adolescent birds. They needed to be kept apart so my adult chickens wouldn’t bully them. Two months after that, I finally introduced the young chickens to the new and improved chicken run. Unfortunately, I now had so many chickens I needed a second chicken house, so the little shed I was using for horse tack had to be sacrificed. Gee, this living the simple life was endlessly complicated.

For six months I fed and tended my flock, checking the nesting boxes everyday as I eagerly awaited nature to kick in. Every day I looked hopefully for eggs. Every day I was disappointed. Finally, when I almost gave up hope of ever seeing an egg, I spied a small round, brown globe in the chicken house.

“I got an egg!” I squealed.

Mark was outside the henhouse waiting for me. We’d only stopped by the henhouse for a moment on our way to pick up the kids from school. He called out, “That’s nice. Come on, we have to go. “

“Come see! Come see!”

“I get it. You have an egg.”

“You
have
to come see it.”

He poked his head into the shed. “Yep, that’s an egg all right.”

“I don’t think you understand the significance of this egg.”

“You have chickens. Eventually, you’re going to get eggs. It’s not rocket science.”

“This is not just an egg. This is an organic egg, only minutes old. This egg came from a chick I raised to a hen all by myself after a year of chick death and disappointment. For your information, this egg is edible. That means
free groceries.
Certainly you see the miracle in this egg now!”

“If I knew you’d get this turned on by an egg, I would have snuck out here with a dozen from the Piggly Wiggly and shoved them under your chickens a month ago.”

Were the egg not so precious, I’d hurl the damn thing right at him. “I’m going to leave this egg and let Neva collect it herself.”

A half hour later, we picked the kids up from school. I shared the exciting news. Since we had a few errands to run while we were in town, I told everyone I encountered about our egg. The girl behind the counter at the coffee shop, the feed store owner, and the woman at the bank all smiled in a patronizing way, as if I were a seven-year-old kid telling strangers I lost my first tooth. Granted, I had about the same degree of childish enthusiasm, but still, I wanted the world to know I finally had raised an egg from scratch. I thought the entire experience was cool.

I called my eldest, Denver, and told her I found an egg in the chicken house, and invited her to breakfast.

“We’re all going to share that one egg? How big is it?”

“It’s a rather small egg, but that’s not the point. I’ll be making a ceremonial breakfast.”

“Gee, sounds great, but I’m working,” she said.

She’d rather work than share my special egg? Her loss. I’d wow the other two kids with my egg. When we got home, I drove everyone straight to the henhouse. The kids went inside to see the historical egg while I looked for my cell phone, planning to take a snapshot of the egg for eternal prosperity.

Kent called out, “There’s no egg in here.”

“Of course there is. Right on the ground.”

“Nope. There is, however, part of an egg shell.”

I rushed in. Sure enough, some stupid chicken had broken my precious egg. There went my ceremonial breakfast. There went my picture. There went my pride and joy.

“Don’t fret. You’ll probably get another egg tomorrow. Once chickens start laying, they keep at it,” Mark said.

“Yeah, but I wanted THAT egg. That was my first. That egg was special.”

“It’s just an egg,” he said.

The kids nodded in agreement. Clearly I was the only one who understood the magnitude of the loss.

Determined to combat the obstacles standing in the way of egg success, I bought oyster shell to scatter about the cage for my chickens to peck at, having read shell makes chicken eggs harder and more resistant to cracking. Linda told me the first few eggs a chicken lays are like practice eggs; they might have a weak shell, or even a missing yolk. No cause for worry. I’d be getting perfect eggs in time.

“The eggs will taste like whatever you feed the chickens. If you feed your chickens veggies, your eggs will taste like veggies,” she said.

If this were true, my eggs were going to taste like powdered donuts because Neva had long since discovered sharing donuts was the way to the hearts of feathered friends.

“Doesn’t that mean you’d have to feed your chickens eggs to get eggs that taste like eggs? That would be cannibalism, right?”

“Trust me, if you like broccoli, feed ‘em broccoli and you’ll get eggs that taste like broccoli,” she said.

Interesting theory. Maybe my chickens would enjoy a glass of wine. I’d rather enjoy eggs that taste like Chardonnay.

For the next few days, I searched the henhouse expectantly, until, at long last, I got another egg. It was small, brown and cold to the touch. I wondered how long the egg had been sitting in the house. An hour? Half a day? I took the egg home to show everyone, announcing that this would be our breakfast. But for all that I’d been waiting for months to cook a homegrown egg, I was now unnerved by the idea of eating something that had been sitting in a bunch of dirty nesting shavings for who knows how long. Eggs were supposed to be kept refrigerated, right? A person could get a serious case of salmonella from an egg that wasn’t stored at the right temperature. Was I really supposed to eat an egg that had been sitting outside in a dirty nest for hours? For all my belief that home grown eggs were supposed to be good for you, picking up an egg off the ground suddenly didn’t seem sanitary. Perhaps there was a step in the process I didn’t know about, like I was supposed to refrigerate the henhouse or pasteurize the egg.

Tentatively, I cracked the egg open in a frying pan. The yolk was a deep, vibrant orange rather than the pale yellow I was accustomed to. The insides seemed thicker somehow. Certainly this meant the egg was old. Perhaps toxic, in decay, or just filled with bacteria absorbed from sitting in hen poop for an hour. All I knew was this egg just didn’t look like any egg I’d ever cooked.

With no small trepidation, I cooked the egg for my husband. If he dropped dead, well, I’d know that home grown eggs were not for us. He took a bite and smiled. “Good.”

I reached out to cover his food with my hand, compelled to confess before he took another bite. “I don’t know if you should eat this egg. The yoke was kinda orange, like it was fathered by a pumpkin rather than a rooster.”

“I believe that’s normal.” Mark said taking another mouthful. “I was told free range chicken eggs have more nutrients and that makes the yolks more colorful.” He polished off his breakfast, proclaimed he felt healthier already, and went off to cut down and sand a dozen trees for our new porch.

I headed for the Internet to read more about eggs.

The more I read, the more foolish I felt. Eggshells have a protective coating that keeps an egg from spoiling after being laid, but not all organic eggs are equal. The organic, free-range eggs I paid an extra dollar for at the health food store came, perhaps, from chickens that most likely had one hour a day in the sunshine on a four by four concrete pad. Hardly “free range” compared to my birds. No wonder I didn’t recognize a healthy egg when I saw one.

Homegrown eggs have 30% more protein, higher nutrients, and less cholesterol than commercially raised eggs. An orange yolk signifies a more healthful egg; the watery pale yellow yolk of store-bought eggs is due to synthetic filler in cheap food. The poor nutrition and lack of natural food sources like bugs or greens, denied the commercially raised layers, are what makes their yolks lackluster. The greatest chefs in the country use only free-range, organic eggs because of the benefit to their masterpiece dishes.

I was committed to growing my own fresh eggs more than ever now, so every day I checked the hen house. I had lots of chickens, but still, I wasn’t getting lots of eggs.

I started complaining about my slacker chickens to anyone who would listen.

“Tell my wife that if she’s patient, she’ll eventually get eggs,” Mark said to Ronnie as they hoisted a huge log into position at the house site. “She’s obsessed with the idea of home grown eggs now.”

“They’ll come,” Ronnie said, his hands running along the bark to be sure the log was set correctly.

“I think I have the only chickens in the history of the world that refuse to lay.”

“Give ‘em time.”

For three weeks, I visited the chicken house, then stomped up to the worksite to complain some more. The house was changing in shape and design, getting bigger and looking more upscale than we originally discussed, but Mark assured me going bigger saved us money somehow.

“Now, I’m not claiming to know everything, ‘cause I only have ‘bout a sixth grade education, but seems to me what you need is some guineas,” Ronnie said, nailing narrow tree trunks to our Adirondack kitchen bar. He took some nails out of his mouth to explain. “I don’t know why, but when you have guineas hanging out with chickens, the birds lay more, as if chickens are competitive or something.”

Like all the odd little details I was discovering about animals, this concept struck me as fascinating. “Do guineas get along with chickens?”

“Sure. They’re just a different kind of chicken, after all. I saw some guineas for sale this week at the flea market. If you want, we can go down tomorrow and have a look-see.”