The Hen House

We live in an old brick house that's falling apart. We try to keep it up, but we get distracted by finer ideas. Like the idea of keeping chickens. So last winter, we built a chicken coop. When it was built, we got five hens and one rooster. We named the hens Princess Leia, General Grevous, Obi-wan, Tiny Qui-gon, and Yoda. We named the rooster Chicken Rooster. General Grevous is the nicest chicken. She likes to be held. Yoda is very nice, too. Chicken Rooster, on the other hand, was mean. He attacked my shins. He attacked Catherine's shins. He attacked the kids. We put up with this with some laughter, but we felt nervous around that mean chicken. The whole thing seemed very silly.

We also let the chickens roam around the neighborhood. This was very stupid, but we did not know it right away. If it is not obvious already, we have very good neighbors! And the neighbors liked the chickens, until Chicken Rooster attacked one of them. Chicken Roo, as my son called him, attacked a very nice man who lives a few houses down. Not only is this man very nice, but he is also fairly old. Not only is he fairly old, but he also takes care of a very young boy. (It is a charming scene!) When Chicken Rooster attacked our neighbor, we thought of how kind our neighbor was, and how our mean rooster had made him bleed from the shin, and how our mean rooster could have attacked the very young boy. So we made Chicken Rooster into soup.

Here is the chicken coop in a photo that's over a year old. Our chickens don't live in it yet. Soon my brother will stain it. In an appropriate amount of time, I'll post another photo of what it looks like now, with stain and chickens. I'm doing this because I've learned that you should always leave the audience wanting more. And what you want, ever so badly, are pictures of chicken coops.