Peek-A-Boo

The neighbors have a new dog.  A mid-sized brindle who loves to chase the chickens all around the pasture, rounding them up like runaway peas on a toddler’s plate. She’s having a ball. Them, not so much. They seem confused by the interloper in their backyard. After all, they were there first. By all rights, they should be chasing the dog, but they haven’t figured that out yet.

I’ve watched this track and field phenomena play out most afternoons since the pup, Sadie, arrived, and I have some thoughts about it. And, just to be clear, I am not stalking my neighbors. It’s just that my desk faces a window that looks out at their pasture. I’m a curious onlooker. A city girl who always wanted to be a farmer. It’s been educational. For example, from everything I can see from my padded office chair, I’ve learned that I’m way too lazy to follow my country girl dreams.

The first time I noticed Sadie living out her cattle dog instincts, I thought she escaped the backyard and had gone rogue in the family’s pasture. Standing on my tippy toes at the dining room window—still not stalking, just concerned—I watched with alarm to see if she was sorting through the feathered herd in search of just the right snack. I’ve heard of family dogs going dark like that. One minute they’re scarfing up Kibble ‘n Bits, and the next they’ve got soggy feathers in their teeth. Eeww.

But this happy herder didn’t plan on any takedowns. Whether the chickens outran her or she simply respects social distancing rules, no animals were harmed in the making of this production.  I think she just gets her kicks watching the troops run away while she barks orders at them like a Marine corporal at bootcamp.

I don’t know but I’ve been told

Chickens think that dogs are trolls

I don’t know but it’s been said

Happy dogs are chicken fed

Which, of course, is just good-natured heckling between farm animals. I know this because I never once saw a feather fly during the relays across the street while I was definitely not stalking anyone from my office or dining room windows.

It’s just good clean fun going on over there. But it really made me wonder about the motivation of chickens. I haven’t actually counted the flock, but a random guess puts it at roughly eleven, give or take. Because you can’t be that accurate without binoculars which, of course, would be ridiculous and certainly proof of stalking.

Let’s just round that number up. There are, perhaps, a dozen full grown chickens in the pasture across the street and only one Sadie. That means the chickens outnumber the cattle dog twelve to one. Why haven’t they unionized? Why are they letting one furry individual bully them like that, scattering them across the pasture like a bowling alley strike? After all, there’s strength in numbers. All they have to do is link wings and take a stand. Like a wall of bowling pins.

Oh. Sadie would probably love that.

I’ve spent a lot of time observing farm animals in the three years since I arrived at the Brady Rehabilitation Ranch, much of it from the other side of my house which backs up to my daughter’s pasture. And I’ve come to this conclusion: animals are much like people but with better instincts. They know their place in the world, and they don’t demand a different position in life than the one they were assigned at birth. Once a chicken, always a chicken. Once a pig, always a pig. Once a sheep, always . . . you get my drift. And when a new resident shows up in the pasture, first there is confrontation and then there is acceptance.

Life could be so much simpler for humans if we learned from our feathered friends. Just let chickens be chicken and let dogs rule the roost. So to speak.

Well, I never claimed to be a philosopher. I’m just a writer surrounded by other people’s pastures trying to make sense out of life. I’m honestly astonished at the variety of animals which can inhabit a quarter acre piece of land without killing one another. They tolerate each other’s differences, find their pecking order, run away when they don’t feel like fighting, and manage to find enough to eat without turning on each other.

Like I said, people could learn a lot from chickens. You don’t even need to use binoculars. Which I definitely don't have.

With gratitude to Howard J for permission to use the hysterical caricature seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: InkTober Day 5: Binoculars | That’s a northern peekaboo bird… | Flickr