Fowl Society

I have not yet seen the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, and I think that I will keep it that way for a long while....

Dear Readers,
I know that this is mainly my Mother, and Catherine and Chuck Thode, but I still would like to call you Readers. I have been presented with the unique opportunity to be a female farmer.

Yes, I know what you are thinking, shy, timid Mary taking on the perils of farm life. Well, you see, the truth is, for anyone that has known me for a long while will have seen me grow up, and something that would have scared me three quarters of the way to death will now only scare me one-tenth to death, a very managable level I must say. Having pushed myself out of my shell, yes the egg has been cracked. No pun intended here. I have taken on a full fledged farm. Around two hundred birds, turkey and chickens, to be exact. Let us not forget the cats, fish, small horse and sheep, they are part of my life right now as well.

As I sit and write this, I am thinking to myself whether or not a female farmer can aquire some sort of pet name, "farmess" perhaps? Maybe "farmett" would be a cute title.



In my hours of feeding and egg collecting I have observed a number of things, which have become profound(ish) revealations to me.

1) Silky Roosters are insanely vicious. (Ok, so this may be a bit of an exageration, but they are very territorial)

2) Male Silkies, though small, frighten me.

3) Turkeys are not bright in the slightest.

4) Bubba the male is so interesting looking that he could belong in a zoo somewhere where Turkeys aren't such a huge item on the menu.

5) Humans are like Chickens.* (Don't worry, I will expound upon this thought)

6) I can only touch a dead chicken if it's feathers are plucked, it has been refrigerated at some point, and it is lacking a head.

7) They say that the Cuddle Fish is at least as intelligeant as a bird, I thought that this was a bigger deal before I spent time with chickens and turkeys.

8) The wispy grey feathered one in the back seems to know something important and it gives me the creeps.

9) Turkey seem to be a dostle creature.

10) I have come to deeply grasp the full meaning and implacations of the insult "bird brain."



*When I walk about doing all of my feeding rounds, I noticed something interesting: birds that were in seperated enclosures but were right next to each other had equally seperate societies. For instance, the chickens in one bin may be duking it out while the guys and gals right next to them were just chilling.
I feel that peope tend to be the same way, we often only observe what is going on with our friends and family that are either in close contact with us or are around all of the time. Like the birds, us humans can be consumed in our own mini-societies, while maybe the guy in the next cage over is dead, or in the case of the human someone who you don't know very well is in need. Working with the chickens is teaching me to evaluate my own life, and to make sure that I am not just showing the same common courtesy as an animal. Humans posses the God given intelligence to pay attention to others outside of our cliques.



I am hoping to take some interesting shots of the animals, so hopefully at some point not too far off I can get those posted for ya'll!



..... So you can see that at this time it would be very wrong for me to watch The Birds.