Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [105]
We don’t read around the table anymore—too many grubbing little hands to manage that—but there is nonstop visiting. There is some discussion of current events and low-level nonmalignant gossip with careful circumventions around certain areas of politics, and a lot of stories from the past. Dad usually doesn’t say much unless we convince him to get going. In my favorite moments someone will crack a good line and I’ll look over and catch Dad with his head tipped down, his eyes closed, and his shoulders shaking silently. That’s the full-on sign that you’ve caught his funny bone.
Jane is fussing, so I take her out through the porch and into the addition. Settling in the recliner, I cup her diapered butt in one palm and tuck her head beneath my chin, and shortly she is asleep. This is one of those moments I’m trying to soak in, to remember what it is for her to fit my chest like this. In the other room I can hear my family talking and laughing, and in here it’s just me with the baby asleep and Jed’s boy Jake grinning at me from beside the coal bucket that still holds the blocks Dad glued together with soybean paste all those years ago. Jake’s favorite movie is Cars, and every now and then he says “Pang!” and tips his tractor back on its butt, just like in the film. Now Sidrock comes roaring in, and shortly after him Amy and Sienna, but Jane snoozes through it all, the noise of her generation drowning out the sound of the previous generation around the popcorn bowl in the other room.
The chickens are growing quickly, and scoot back and forth from the tractor to the pump house like old pros. At first we had to reach inside the tractor and fish them out one by one, and reverse the procedure in the morning when we moved them from the pen into the tractor. But now when I pull the tractor up to the pump house door and drop the gangplank, they skid down it on their heels, then hightail it straight into the roost. One poor little chicken is always last. She is racked with constant tremors. They came on early and have persisted, so we call her Little Miss Shake-N-Bake. The tremors affect her gait, and it always takes her a few tries to hit the chicken tractor ramp straight on. But she’s game. You can see her gather herself, resolutely struggle to point her wagging head at the door, and then, like the drunk choosing the one in the middle, dive for it. If she crashes into the side of the door, she simply gathers herself and tries it again. Sometimes I give Little Miss Shake-N-Bake a boost. As a result of watching her struggle, Amy has come to love Little Miss Shake-N-Bake as her favorite chicken.
The pigs are rapidly churning up their patch, upending clusters of quack, bumping up rocks, and now and then—based on the occasional barking seal noise that floats up from the pen—testing the limits of the electric fence. They are beginning to lose some of their charm, grunting aggressively and nipping at my calves when I enter the pen to refill their feeder. Try lying down once and see what happens, they seem to be saying. But it’s still fun to grab the slop bucket and call out “PIG-PIG!” just to hear them woof and see them come bounding out from their excavations to press their snouts against the wire panels with their ears in the “What’s up?” position. They quickly outgrew the rubber tub I bought at Farm & Fleet, so I have taken one of the many plastic barrels Mills scrounged from