Journal of a Living Lady #76
You don’t know about our
recently acquired farm menagerie. Currently it includes four guineas, a pair of
pygmy goats, two ducks, eight hens and a rip-roaring rooster. He is quite a
bragging papa. Every time one of those
hens lays an egg, which is quite often, he rises on his tiptoes and crows. By
the end of the day that rooster is so lame and hoarse he needs crutches and
throat spray. Buddy has offered to put him out of his misery, but I hid the
shotgun.
I grew up in the city, but
always wanted to live on a farm. Strange how many people I have met who grew up
on a farm and always wanted to live in the city. Maybe we got switched at
birth.
When I was nine, I decided
to grow a garden in our crudely fenced backyard. I hoed an area about nine foot by nine. The neighborhood grocery
store had a seed section, so I emptied my piggy bank and bought some
butterbeans and corn. Sure enough, the seeds sprouted during that hot summer.
About that same time I
fell in love with two little ducklings at the corner feed store. If I was going to be a bona fide farm girl,
animals were a must. My parents didn’t care as long as I took care of them. No
problem. I snuck a pan out of mama’s cupboard for water and fed the ducks scraps
from the supper table.
Alas. A few days later I
discovered all my hardy plants had vanished.
I was bewildered and disgusted. Dying I could understand, but totally
disappearing! How could that have happened?
Henry, a somewhat retarded
twelve-year-old who lived behind us,
said the ducks did it. He must have heard his grandmother say that.
The two ducks were
unofficially indicted. But the death penalty!
Now that was too drastic no matter how disappointed I was in them.
The next week I went
outside to play with Quacky and Dacky. There they were, lying on the ground,
deader than dirt. I screamed in horror.
All the neighbors came running. Well, most of them. Nobody could understand how
those two full grown ducks could have just keeled over like that, their heads
twisted to the side.
The next morning I
answered a knock at the door. To my
surprise stood Henry and his mother. Henry meekly handed me $5 as his mother
explained that it was he who had wrenched the ducks’ necks. I was speechless.
My mama overheard Henry’s
sincere, but obviously practiced apology and eased into the living room. She
gave Henry’s mother a sympathetic look and lightly squeezed my shoulder. Taking
her cue, I babbled that is was okay and that I’d get more ducks someday.
Henry was strange and I
knew it, but he was normally such a gentle soul. I didn’t sleep well for nights
wondering what must have been in Henry’s mind to do such a terrible thing. Now
I understand that it was his form of justice.
Our present farm
menagerie, including Quacky and Dacky II,
reminds me of those childhood days long past. We don’t have a neighbor named Henry, but I am keeping my eye on
Buddy.
++++++++++++++++
August 23, 2000
