What a pretty day! The sun is squint your eyes bright. The blue sky goes on forever. Nothing is moving. It is 49°. The high today will be 53°, spring on Cape Cod. Tonight will drop back to the 30’s, back to winter.

I have two errands left. I also have house chores. I am inundated by spiders. This morning I walked around clearing webs. The fur balls are back. I need to clear yet again. That seems to occur every couple of days. I’ve been using the broom. The balls fly in the air when I sweep. I have a vacuum, but I do like a broom.

When I was a kid, the creatures around me were the usual, the spawns of Satan, an occasional skunk, garter snakes and birds. I don’t remember which birds. I never paid that much attention. I do remember watching a praying mantis, the strangest looking insect I ever saw. It looked like the miniature version of a monster from a Japanese science fiction movie, a little Rodan.

I had chickens in Ghana. My first hen was a gift from a friend. She came with a few eggs on which she’d been sitting. Her roost was the bottom half of a pottery bowl. It was kept in the toilet area of my backyard to keep her and her eggs safe; however, it didn’t keep me safe. (Bathroom talk here) the toilet room was small. I could touch both walls when I sat on the proverbial throne. The hen was right near my feet. If I moved my feet, she’d peck them. I always wore sandals so the pecking hurt. I learned to keep my feet at a distance, difficult in the small space. But there was something neat about this set up. I could watch the progress of the eggs. Sitting there, got to see the first cracks. I could hear the chick pecking away. This hen was free range. Every morning she’d leave the yard followed by her chicks. In the late afternoon she’d return, minus at least one chick then finally all the chicks were gone, taken by some predator. My students later told me she left eggs around the compound instead of in the nesting area. This hen later had a new purpose. She was dinner. I did get more hens and my flock grew. I became a chicken docent. I also became a plucker of great renown.

This entry was posted on April 10, 2026 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.