RUNNING WILD
Readers responded to Amy Pataki’s chicken diaries with stories, letters and, even, poems,
Restaurant critic Amy Pataki and her family decided to rent chickens this summer. This the 12th and final instalment of an occasional series about backyard livestock.
Who knew backyard chickens would be such a talking point?
I thought I was sharing my story with you. But you shared your stories with me.
You wrote letters, like Nottawa resident Alice-Faye McLean, who grew up in Collingwood with a hen house. McLean, 75, remembers the hens scolding her when she collected eggs. Her mother Ollie Wagner, now 101 and a resident of Collingwood Nursing Home, would turn unproductive hens into Sunday dinner. After her mother plucked, singed and eviscerated a chicken, young Alice-Faye and her two older brothers would fight over the long yellow legs.
It took skill “to make the claws move by pulling on a rubberlike cord projecting from said claw. All day long we played with our new toy, never thinking of the germs on such a thing,” McLean wrote.
“It never occurred to us to be sentimental about the hen. It was not made a pet or given a name.” Point taken. You emailed help finding a bigger coop and how to treat bumblefoot. The foot abscesses on our three hens are clearing up now that we’ve changed the roosting bar, but Temara Brown of Cambridge, who rehabilitates ex-battery hens, nonetheless pointed me towards a host of online forums for future help, including Vegans With Chickens on Facebook. You told me about Chickenman, the camp American radio series about a shoe salesman who fights crime in Midland City as a feathered superhero alter ego.
Launched in 1966, it remains in syndication.
You even wrote poems, or at least one of you did. North York resident Larry Band composed a humorous sonnet about what could happen if we were mistaken about the gender of our chickens.
“You will not be enjoying any eggs that in these birds you hoped would be growing. Instead be prepared to be awak- ened every morn by three misnamed roosters crowing,” Band concluded.
I stumble upon one strange story on television: hypnotizing chickens. This is not just an Iggy Pop lyric.
While binging Australian reality series Bondi Vet, my family and I watch veterinarian Chris Brown lull Mercedes the chicken into immobility by lying her flat on her back, tilting her head forward and stroking her from the neck down.
Mercedes stays prone, eyes blinking, until Brown snaps his fingers.
“Hypnotizing chooks (Australian slang for chickens) is a real art form,” Brown tells the camera.
“They might look as though they fight a little bit at the start but eventually they enjoy it. They go into this deep state of relaxation.” We try it on Julep. No success. Mostly, the stories have been light. I mean, these are chickens we’re talking about.
Have you seen the Halloween costumes for hens? If not, check the web. Also worth checking out: The glamour poultry shots in Matteo Tranchellini and Moreno Monti’s book Chicken.
But I heard poignant tales, too. Photojournalist Randy Risling shared the story of rescued battery chickens who acted as therapy animals for troubled youth at the now-closed Cobble Hill Farm Sanctuary near Stratford, Ont.
Star librarian Astrid Lange clued me into another rescue chicken project, this one a photo book by Janet Holmes linking women’s reproductive rights to eggs.
“I thought about how many women still struggle to obtain adequate, affordable reproductive health care — and how in turn we are socialized to exploit hens’ reproductive systems. It seems that even across species, society expects to dictate how females use their bodies,” Holmes writes.
In the end, though, writing about — and living with — the chickens has been a gift.
Not only did I learn that the only two places in the world without chickens are Antarctica and Vatican City (lack of space), I learned Star readers are generous in sharing their knowledge and opinions on the subject.
Fair is fowl and fowl is fair.