A New View Over the Chicken Run
Last night, as often happens, I couldn't sleep. So I decided to turn on one of my several dozen satellite channels and watch a late night documentary. One of the discovery channels was spending the weekend exploring one of my favorite disaster topics: Dinosaurs and Mega-beasts the blurb said. Oh goody, lots of magma, meteorite explosions, predators and prey; just what Disaster Cat needs to relax and get ready to go to bed. Most of these documentaries I have now seen about a dozen times already. Usually viewed in the dark, so the magma streams show up better. But last night, they had a new one. I don't remember the exact name of it, but the show could have had a title like: "Dinosaurs: Your Feathered Friends." To compress and hour's viewing into a sentence; it seems that new evidence, 2003 no less, proves beyond a show of a doubt that some of the raptor Dinosaurs had feathers. And family includes some pretty famous members, like T-Rex and his buddies. I had my suspicions about this, ever since excavations a few years ago found that the intact skeleton of "Sue" (the most complete T-Rex ever found) had a wish bone. But the feathers pretty much clinched it for me.
And now, I am watching my chicken run with new eyes. According to this documentary, I have not just chickens, but living fossils in my back yard. And my first thought is: "Low how the mighty have fallen" But then I take one of my daily walks and really start to dwell on the subject. I remember how a few years ago, when we slaughtered a pig, my barley loving and supposedly vegetarian little birdies ran the barn cats off of the meat scrapes with their beaks, claws and feeding frenzy. After that, one of our friends started asking about "The Kilmurry Volspartors." This was not too long after the third Jurassic Park Movie...
Then, a few months later, my husband says one of the hens catch a field mouse and eat it live. Just like it was a bug, of course chickens eat bugs. That's why many people let them free range in the garden, at least after the plants are grown. But field mice..? Now that we have our little darlings enclosed in a chicken run (they had become far too good at hiding egg stashes in various spots like the rafters of the workshop), we take them a lot of dinner left-overs. What is their favorite delight? Hint, it isn't left over rice, pasta, barley or salad...its Meat! Lots and lots of meat! They'd eat nothing else if I'd bring it out to them. Which I don't, because I have Barn Cats who need it a lot more (and unlike the chickens they can wait outside the back door for hours looking hopeful). No matter what else is in the bowl, its the meat and fat pieces that are grabbed up first. The hens snatch them and run as fast as they can, trying to horde their "kill" to themselves. Its funny and amusing to watch. The young ones will sometimes get a piece and play ball with it, back and forth. Its all very cute, but when I watched them this morning, I had another image come into my mind.
I could not escape it, there it was, thanks to last night's TV viewing. My mind keep seeing them, in the place of their ancestors, as chickens 40 feet tall! And the turn about of perspective was frightening. Suddenly, it wasn't funny to think of myself the size of the field mouse and the barn cats the size of bugs. Being a football for young chicks is not my idea of life enhancing experience. But then, I decided to just keep watching, and from the safely of my current size, let my imagination run wild.
I looked at our proud King-Cockerel: Saladin of the Many Wives...I wondered, "what would he look like, if his shinny green, black and gold feathers were each a foot long, and glinted with dappled, primordial sunlight. Did his great forbearer also dance gracefully on his leviathan legs: huge spurs jetting above his feet, ready to shred all threats to his harem? Did his voice ring out with screeching crowing so loud that the ground shook as if thunder had hit it? Did it announce the coming of the sunlight to all the day dwellers of the ancient planes? Did he seek out the best roosting places for his wives and lead them to the safest caves at night? Did they hunt together in a pack, in burst of great speed. Followed by playful demolition of any resulting dinner?
Were his giant wives, also of duller color than he? Were their battles for status as intense? The pecking order being formed and reformed as the months and years went by. Since they have found raptors seated on nests, I try and imagine these great birds, bigger than my chicken house, staying for days upon a quiet nest. Their huge feathered arms and tails gently enfolding their eggs; perhaps making gentle clucking sounds the way my mother-birds do when they go "broody." And when their larger eggs hatched, did they shepard and show their chicks about. Teaching them how to find food in the daytime and covering them with their downy feathers at night?
The images are endless, awesome and frightening. I have to wonder just how much of what my chickens do on a small scale, their ancestors did sized large? Suddenly, the joke about volsaprators seems more appropriate than ever. Hidden in their behavior may be many keys to the remote past. But I'm also very glad that the past is the past. I prefer that my barnyard animals not be thinking about me as possible prey, its supposed to be the other way around....
Chicken and Dumplings any one?
Disaster Cat....wondering what to do with several dozen eggs at Kilmurry House...
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