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Dear Easy,

Pull up a chair, sit a spell, and I’ll tell you a story. Don’t worry; it’s not long...it’s more like a Fractured Fairy tale than an Aesop’s fable...

Once upon a time, in another century, dearly departed hubby and I had a 5-acre piece of heaven. All it had on it were jack pine trees and our little house and our little baby boy. Oh, and a dog named Skipper, of course (had to include the dog, in case someone decides to illustrate this story).

Both of us come from big dairy farm families, each of us one generation away from the farm. So, we know that our 5 acres won’t be used for dairy cows...or horses (hay burners), but we had to have a herd of something, anything. So, after my Grandma assured me the cows would not live on the pine trees, we decided on chickens.

(The musical interlude is “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young<who we don’t need round anyhow, but that’s another story).

So, hubby worked full time, I stayed home with son#1, tended the garden, canned whatever I could get, and we had a happy little life. Hubby even called me “Millie”..remember that old commercial for savings bonds, I think? The guy pulls in in his work truck and goes to his wife, who is wearing a dress (really? REALLY??) and hanging clothes on the line. The guy called her Millie, so I was “Millie on paydays.”

We decided 50 chickens (you could only buy them from the feed store in lots of 25) would do. So we built a cute little coop, fenced the living crap out of their yard, and even put some fencing on top of the fences to protect from the “flying teradactlyes” our son was sure we had.

When the chick order came in, it was still too cold to put them in their coop, so we had them on the house’s side porch for a few weeks. Stinky, noisy, never again. Then, we got to move them out to their new digs.

These were the kind of chickens that you only had to raise for like 3 months, and then you butchered them. Err..we butchered them.

Son and I spent lots of time watching “those chickies, mama!” He thought they were better than legos. He was 2; what did he know?

One day, there was a terrible accident. I noticed one chicken had blood on it, and all the other chickens were chasing it around and pecking at it!!! Horrible!! Son was freaking out. Me freaking out. What to do? No cellphones, no calling hubby at work...what to do?

I did the smart thing...I called my favorite uncle (of the dairy farm family) because I was sure we had done something STOOPIT, and it was our fault that this poor chicken was being pecked to death. I knew this uncle wouldn’t laugh at me or yell at me. And he didn’t. He explained it like this:

“Well, ya see, Bluey, once a chicken gets blood on it, the rest of the flock knows it’s weak. They see it as a sick game; this bloody chicken is also freaking them out. Who is this stoopit ALL WHITE chicken running around with all that blood on him? Doesn’t he know that the Bad Creatures that live in the Big Piney Forest will smell the blood, come to see what’s going on, and invite all their friends over for a chicken dinner? Every raccoon, weasel, fox, and hawk will soon be among us. The sky really is falling! We must get rid of that damn bird. Attack!”

So, following dear uncle’s advice, I took the injured chicken, after much chasing and cursey words, and got him into a box for hubby to deal will. Son watched the whole thing; farm lessons start early and last a lifetime. His favorite part was my language. “Daddy, Mommy said all the big bad MEAN words and some other ones too! She was Mad!”

The flock settled down. All was well in the kingdom until it happened again. Only, when it happened again, there were no freakouts. We knew what we had to do. We knew that the pecking chickens were just doing their “job.” They only pecked on a chicken when they got a reaction. They didn’t (really) think about it. They just did it.

There was peace on the farm when there were no bleeding chickens (victims).

Wow, way longer than I intended. But, look at it like this: All the time I spent writing it and you spent reading it was less time for you to think about HG and less time for other posters to keep chumming the waters (and yes, Kitten, I’m talkin’ bout you...just to be clear). This beef has taken up most of the bandwidth and time for this weekend. It’s the #1 top story on our thread. Everyone is chiming in, myself included. But there’s probably only one person who thinks it’s funny...HG. We all give him too much time. We started an internecine war here, with some folks calling for the anti-war folks to leave the thread and “Shut up, Yoko, you’re breaking up the band!” (Again, KC, talking to you).

We Need To
Just
Stop.

Chickens can’t learn from experience, but hopefully, we can.

Let It Go. Ignore him. Don’t respond to him. Shun him.

Just
Stop
Please

Closing music by Madness:

Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our

Our house, it has a crowd
There’s always something happening
And it’s usually quite loud
Our mum she’s so house-proud
Nothing ever slows her down and a mess is not allowed