Living in the Country... Pt.1

When I was in second grade we moved to the country. However, because my Grandma owned the best daycare in town that I happen to frequent while Mom was at work, I didn't have to change school districts, nor did I lose my friends because of the move. I went to Cleveland Elementary in Cedar Rapids, Iowa from Kindergarten to Sixth grade. During these years I was completely care free. No worries, no bills, no stress, no complications. The Younger Years. Those were the days........

In sixth grade, we as a class, did the whole chicken hatching in the incubator experience and even opened some of the eggs on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days to see the process of growth and drew pictures of what we saw. It was the first time I had ever dealt with any kind of dissection. It wasn't gross to me, which as a sixth grade girl it should of been. Instead, in my head, it was all chalked up to science. The circle of life. How we learn about birth and death. When the chicks hatched they were ADORABLE! All cute and yellow, and fluffy, and just precious little chicks all a chirping. They stayed in our classroom for the remainder of the week, and my friends and I quickly picked our favorites. I had told my parents all about them and on Friday, my Mom and Dad came to the school to pick me up and offered to take the chicks off my teacher's hands! I was ecstatic! All these little chicks I had patiently watched over for 32 days were now coming home with me. It was the first time I was grateful we lived in the country. Mom and Dad boxed them up and off we went. When we got home I saw Dad had created a chicken coop with chicken wire all around the outside and a small house for the chickens to reside while they grew to become egg producers. I loved my new little pets. I had names for some of them, and I kept tabs and updates on all of them for my friends at school.

As the weeks turned into months, my cute yellow chicks lost their little yellow fluff and started turning into white, black, and brown chickens. We had roosters and hens now, big ones and small ones, not the cute little fluffy yellow chicks I had loved. As they grew, they would start to fly a little too. They could not yet get out of their chicken wire pen but they were trying. My Dad started a compost out by their coop so they had our leftover veggies to eat and they got bigger and bigger. By the end of the school year, they were full grown.

That summer, I spent some time at my Grandma's daycare realizing I was about to go into junior high. This would be my last summer at daycare and I would no longer be coming into town to go to school. I would start junior high at the school in the country and have all new friends. I had one friend at this new school, Sam, who lived a road over but she was also a grade younger. Even so, I would now ride the bus to school and back and the driveway, was my new walk to school, instead of the three blocks to Cleveland Elementary from Grandma's house.

On my first day of seventh grade, my Mom drove me to the end of the driveway, and like Forrest Gump, she introduced herself to Phil, the bus driver, and proceeded to snap pictures as I took my first bus ride. This DID NOT happen in Kindergarten or first grade because I walked from Grandma's. This moment which would seem fun and cute at age 5 or 6 was completely embarrassing at the age of 12 or 13 and I think Phil was blushing. My Mom was a hottie!

During the fall, the chickens were still trying to get over that chicken wire but to no avail.... Every now and then on the weekends, Dad would let them out of the pen to wander the yard. It was fun watching him and my little brother trying to chase them all back in when the sun was starting to fall. I remember it would take hours sometimes....

Winter was a cold one, like it always is in Iowa. Those chickens stayed bundled up in that coop and during winter they definitely became Dad's pets, because it was too cold to go check on them. Even the cats were on their own and I just prayed they were warm.

By spring I had gotten pretty good at getting up and down this quarter mile driveway we lived at the end of. From the house there was a hill, a big hill that I ventured up and then down, to a long leveled off part and at the end was the gravel road. If Phil saw me get over the hill, and if he was going slow enough to look, he would stop and wait for me. If he was rolling, I would miss the bus and have to walk back up and down the hill, to the house to call Mom at work and have her come get me and take me to school. This frustrated Mom because she worked in town and had to take off of work and drive 23 minutes to get me, take me to school and then head back to work. As a working mother now, this would piss me off. I don't know how she put up with me. Later in high school, I remember not even trying to catch the bus, just so I could go late and she would have to come get me. What a non appreciative kid I was. Spoiled! But anyway, back to the story......

Most mornings I had to be at the bus stop by 6:15 A.M. That's early! I was the first person Phil picked up in the morning. Also the first one in the country off the bus. Phil usually let his bus warm up in the bus garage at school, which gave me ten or more extra minutes. If I was there by 6:25 I usually beat him, and didn't have to wait long. The morning walk was cold at that hour, but after school on those first spring afternoons, the walk home was refreshing. My driveway was surrounded by cornfields on both sides. Once you got to the top of my hill, walking home, you could see our garage, our pretty green front yard in front of our beautiful country home, and the chicken coop. The chickens had reached their full growth by now and were able to fly out of the coop, much to my surprise. They eventually as the days went by, would wander all around the yard making themselves at home. Every night, Dad would have to round them up into their house. Every afternoon, they were back out. As they started to get more comfortable around the yard, they started to make me more uncomfortable.

When the bus would drop me off at 2:45P.M. I would start my walk up the long quarter mile drive. The first long straightaway I would reflect on the day, think about what I would do when I got home, remind myself of homework, who I would call, if I had chores.... it was a long walk. Once I got to the top of the hill, I was usually anxious to get to the house, maybe I had to pee from the long walk, maybe I just wanted to sit and drink something cool and refreshing... I would start down the hill carrying my heavy bag and the roosters would spot me coming, and like guard dogs they would head my way. They would get close, but not too close, and by the time I reached my porch they were on my heels in attack mode! This started to scare me and I asked my Mom for help. She suggested a baseball bat. The next morning I took the baseball bat down to the end of the driveway and put it by the fence before Phil got to my stop. It was a plastic bat my brother used to hit corn cobs with in the yard. He had a good arm. After school that afternoon, I waited for Phil to drive away and then grabbed the bat and started the trek home. As I reached the hill, I played in my mind how I was gonna swing at these roosters and scare them away once and for all and as I started quietly down the hill, again, like guard dogs here they came.... slowly making their way nonchalantly towards me, so as to claw my eyes out and leave me for dead... or so I thought. When I reached the bottom of the hill, they started to get close and I hadn't really considered my heavy bag and the effect it would have on my swing. When one got close I took aim and let him have it! WHAM! I hit him hard!!!!! And I saw it- in slow motion- I swung........................................... and connected.......................................and the rooster's head flipped to the side and then stood straight back up in pure rage! He was now out for blood and I had made my move! As the shock in what had just happened wore off for both of us... I CUT OUT! Running... as fast as I could...running...feeling my life flash before me... running... because death of a rooster would not be cool... running... he's getting closer... I quickly thought fast and threw my bag in his direction by the garage and bolted for the house. As I reached the door, he reached the porch. I was ALIVE!!!

Moments later I had no choice..... I looked out the window to see if the coast was clear to go and fetch my bag.... he was waiting. I called Mom.

"Mom, I need your help..."

"Joy, I'm at work, what is it?"

"Can you pick my bag up out of the driveway on your way home?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"I had to throw it at the rooster to save my own life! And now I can't do my homework until you get here with my bag."

"Okay, we'll talk about this when I get home. I'll get your bag."

my hero....

That night, we had a talk. I told Mom and Dad about the rooster and how I hit him with the bat and my bag and still to no avail, he was on my heels. I told then he was some kind of mutant rooster that didn't even flinch when I struck bat to his head, and he is now probably out to destroy me. I was scared of them all not just the one, and I didn't want them anymore. How can we keep them confined? I had asked.... Dad clipped their wings so they couldn't fly out of the coop. It didn't help.....

For the next week Mom stopped everyday and picked up the bat and my bag from the driveway, and everyday after school I went through the traumatic experience of risking my life to get home and not be maimed by the ferocious rooster that now ruled our home. The following weekend my brother was outside playing and the rooster jumped on his back and rode my brother around the yard, who was screaming for Dad the whole time to come rescue him from the rooster. When Dad went to save my brother, an altercation occurred between my Dad and the rooster, and although Dad says he won the rooster bit him and almost took a toe!

When Sunday of that weekend came, I woke up to my Mom busy on the phone with relatives and Dad outside digging a hole. I went out to see what was going on. "You'll see" He said with a smile. My Dad and my brother went and got a tree stump from the back yard and put two nails in it and set it by the hole. Then my Grandma and both of my aunts showed up. My aunt Barb asked if I was going to help... I wasn't even really sure what was going on. Then Dad grabbed a rooster and headed to the stump. He put the rooster's head in between the nails, my Grandpa held on to the bird and my Dad chopped that rooster's head off and threw the head in the hole. I was in shock! My Grandpa let it go and it ran through the yard with it's head cut off in no certain direction, making no noise, blood squirting, and my brother chasing it and laughing at such a funny sight. After it would stop, he would pick it up and take it in the house where four women in aprons with big boiling pots would boil, defeather, cook, freeze and disperse of every rooster and chicken we had. At times the whole kitchen would smell and then there were feathers everywhere as Grandma showed all the other ladies the ropes on how to tend to a fresh bird.

It was a gratifying moment for me. Those birds got their day and I never felt scared walking home after that. My brother played freely in the yard, and Dad's toe eventually got better. We ate chicken every Sunday for a lot of Sundays and had homemade chicken nuggets too. Those cute fluffy yellow chicks turned out to be some juicy chicken nuggets. Our family never got any more chicken, or any other barnyard animals for that matter after that... We just stuck to our cats and dogs and a pond full of fish.

The End