The Chicken Lady

We are selling our house, and among the many things we had to do to get it ready to put on the market was to get rid of our pet chickens. I was afraid this would mean eating them, or giving them to the Live Poultry Fresh Killed place in Cambridge, but after a call to my friend Paula Jordan (the Queen of Arlington - she knows everybody), I emailed a woman who knew a woman ...

So, the chicken lady that I met via email had a self-proscribed "large flock of birds" in Bolton including two bantam hens and a bantam rooster who were wild and could use the strong presence of a family of domesticated hens. Plus she had her eyes on my very nice wood coop that I was giving her for free for taking the chickens off my hands.

The chicken lady gave us her address and told us how to prep our birds for the trip - wait til they went to sleep, when they are basically dead - you could do anything to them when they are asleep and they won't notice - then put each one in a box and let them sleep there overnight and through the trip.

Everything went precisely as planned, and I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning to break down the coop. Thank goodness it was a balmy 50 degree January morning, because that was back-breaking work already, and having to pry a frozen coop apart would have been much less fun.

I loaded the chicken boxes, the coop, and all of our various chicken supplies in the car with my youngest son, Hank, who was recovering from a nasty reaction to a Measles vaccine. He was excited to go see "the farm" where the chickens would live, plus it was an opportunity for him to hold Garmin, our GPS. He is in love with Garmin. It makes it hard for me to find unknown addresses, however, as he has to HOLD Garmin - in the backseat - and then interpret Garmin's directions for me. Did I mention he is four? At any rate, we usually find the places we are looking for, but not always by the most direct route. He's starting to learn his right and left, though, which helps.

We drive out to Bolton, into a subdivision, and I think, "Uh-oh ... I was describing this as a farm to the kids ... " We pull up to the Chicken Lady's address and first notice the giant trash pile in front, the Christmas tree laying in the middle of the yard, the enclosed front porch with sheets hanging over the windows, blocking our view. Hank didn't want to come with me onto the porch. He was flummoxed by the lack of a doorbell, by the empty tanks that probably once had animals in them, the collection of axes by the front door, the ram skull, the various other skulls, the piles of things ... We knock once. We wait. We knock again. We wait. We knock again...

I'm starting to hear rustling inside. I'm getting a sinking feeling of dread myself. I'm thinking about the guy who posted on Craigslist that he needed farmhands and then killed the people who showed up. And then the door opens and a very nice looking middle-aged lady smiles at us and asks us in. I look at the skulls, the axes, and I follow her inside.

The front room of the house is piled with stacks of ... things. There are large stacks of little cakes of cheese or soap or something. There are cooked animal carcasses in various states of decay. There is a giant stack of waffles. The kitchen counter is covered in old food. The lady invites us into the kitchen where she starts pulling out skulls of things and showing them to Hank, who has lodged himself so deeply into my thigh that he can't possibly see anything. He keeps mumbling, "let's give her the chickens and go, Momma." She explains that the skulls get left out in the yard for the animals to clean off for two years and then they are ready to bring in. She shows the hole in the back of the baby lamb skull from where the bolt when in to kill it. The cakes of things are soaps made out of baby lamb fat. Hank says, again, "Let's give her the chickens and go, Momma."

So we go out to the yard to look at the coop. She has about ten geese, giant geese, flapping and yelling at her. She has ducks, about a dozen ducks, flying all around. She says, "The geese are mad at me right now because I keep eating them." She points to one of the ducks flying around and says, "She'll be the last one that I eat because I can't CATCH her!!"

She puts us in the chicken coop.

As I'm trying to figure out if I can break out of the chicken coop if necessary, she comes into the chicken coop to show us around (it's the size of a walk-in closet). We are in there with the ducks. Hank says, "Let's give her the chickens and go, Momma."

So we go get the chickens. They seem to love her. They are unsure of the coop. They have never roosted higher than a foot off the ground. The Chicken Lady's roost is about five feet up. The chickens are VERY unsure of the ducks. The chickens bok questioningly at Hank and I as we get led out of the coop by the Chicken Lady.

The Chicken Lady shows us her rabbits. She's eaten all but two of them. She says she won't eat the two that are left - one because he is too old and mean and the other because he is too sweet.

She shows us her beehives. She talks a lot. She tells me that her neighbors in her fancy subdivision hate her, but that her town has recently passed a Right to Farm act so she is legally allowed to do all of these things in her backyard. She gives me a block of baby lamb soap to take home. It's going to be good for my skin, she assures me. Hank is literally dragging me, with rapidly increasing force, towards the car, and his pleas to leave the area are getting louder and more forceful as well. So we bid farewell to the chickens, and the Chicken Lady. She promises us she will send us pictures as the girls get settled. She promises us to invite us out when she gets new chicks and baby lambs in the spring so that we can see the menagerie in full swing. She promises us she won't eat our chickens.