Life:Unfiltered

View Original

Army of White

So this past week, the temperatures have been hovering around Satan’s-butthole-after-a-wet-fart degrees here in Kansas. For those of you unfamiliar with Kansas weather and Satan’s butthole, let me just tell you its frigging HOT. And wet. There is so much humidity that you need to grow gills just to breathe. And because of that, graduation of my soldiers’ basic training has been postponed. Meaning it’s too damned hot to get the bigger coop built and to let the birds run loose.

BUT! I did give them names. Sassy’s death reminded me that life isn’t promised to anyone or anything so rather than wait for the ceremony of graduation and releasing them into the big barracks with their names spoken out loud by their commander to give them legitimacy, I gave them names as I chucked them into the inside pen we fashioned for the week. May I present to you Frankie, Pearl and No-Name (I call her Bitch, but I have littles who frequently visit and their mother frowns on them cussing - poor kids).

Left to right: Frankie, No-Name, Pearl

Frankie is named such because I seriously think “she” is a “he” because the personality is very dominant, the comb is much more pronounced, and as you can see the waddle area is much more red than the others. The name “Frankie” is also uni-sex - it’ll work for both boys and girls, so if I’m wrong, no harm to how the soldier identifies. Frankie was (and still is) the biggest of the soldiers with his stocky frame and posture. He don’t slouch, that’s for sure.

No-Name (aka Bitch) is named such because her personality hasn’t quite come through yet, but she does like pecking people. Not as in, “oopsie, I pecked your finger by mistake when I was getting the grass” kind of pecking either. She purposefully pecks fingers and likes to play it off as an accident. She mainly does this when I’m trying to move her from one area to another, so it could be her way of saying she doesn’t want to go. No-Name was the smallest of the troops when I brought them home, and after Sassy’s death, she seems to be taking over her comrade in arms namesake.

Pearl is named such because she is all white. Not a speck of blonde, black, gray, or anything in between is in her coloring. She’s also a prissy soldier, in the fact she keeps herself pristine. She grooms herself constantly and carries herself with a quiet confidence. Like, she knows she’s a pretty hen and makes no excuses for it. She owns her prettiness. On the other hand, she’s also a bit of a klutz, but that trait has only surfaced recently - I’m hoping she outgrows it.

And that’s the army. Nothing too exciting this week since the temps are ungodly hot and every living thing in Kansas is just trying to survive the heat until next week. I do have to clean their pen today. That’ll prove interesting as Nibbles has taken to sitting outside the temporary barracks, faking like she hasn’t been trying to get under the door whenever I walk by.

Am I the only one who thinks my life has turned into “Animal Farm?”