one weird boy and one mean hen

A boy moved into the house across the creek today. I saw him when I was out scattering feed to the chickens. I called out to him–”Hey, boy!”–but he didn’t answer, just turned his shoulder and sprinted up the hillside.

Now it’s true we don’t have a mirror in the house, but Aunt Kitty never looked at me funny before I walked out the door this morning and Ben, well, I guess Ben never notices much of anything except maybe the smell when Aunt Kitty’s making Toad in the Hole for supper. But still, I think that boy must just be weird. What kind of boy runs away from an itty bitty girl like me? A weird kind, that’s what.

While the chickens were busy pecking at their feed, I turned up six eggs in the coop, all of them white. The arauconas have taken to nesting in the haystack again, so I spent the rest of the morning scrambling over hay bales hunting for more eggs. I only turned up three more, and one mean hen who seems to be planning to sit on hers till they hatch. (Never mind that our rooster got castrated last year on account of he kept attacking Aunt Kitty’s legs and putting holes in her stockings.) But who am I to argue with an angry hen? I like my eyes in their sockets and my skin in one piece, thank you very much.

I just set those nine eggs in my apron and told Aunt Kitty there weren’t no more to be found.