Monday, July 13, 2009

Some punk in off-the-rack cammies just tried to steal my fucking chickens.

The chickens spend much of their day scratching among the plants up on the green roof. They keep the bugs down and help aerate the soil and their occasional droppings add nitrogen to the soil — or so I’m told by Ms. Bessler who knows about these sorts of things. We’ve got a coop where they roost at night (locked-up tight due to feral cats and a local raccoon or two). About half the eggs get laid there, too. We sometimes find the ones laid among the garden. It’s a slapdash affair — we had no idea we were getting chickens, after all — but it works well enough.

Anyway, I was home today because April’s got a summer cold that she probably caught at the giant community dinners we’ve been attending. We were painting — well she was painting, I was reading a book — our on the porch when she said, “Mommy, oh! Look! There’s a nice man on the roof! With the chickens!”

“That’s nice, dear,” I muttered and then heard a SQUAWK!

This guy is up in my (tiny, sad, droopy) tomatoes running after one of the chickens. I hollered for Paul to come get April and as soon as he could see her, I clambered up onto the roof. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

“We’re appropriating these here chickens, ma’am, for the troops.”

“The hell you are!” I put my body between him and the chickens (who knew whose hand fed them, if nothing else, and ran behind me when I showed up).

“Ma’am, it’s for the troops, you don’t want to be unpatriotic, do you?” He smiled and he was a good looking kid, maybe 19 or so, and you could tell he got a lot with that smile. And for a few seconds I actually thought that this guy was real army — the new New England one, at least, if not “regular” army.  Then he cocked his head and all but winked at me and said, “It’s to feed the soldiers, ma’am.”

I don’t know if it was the “ma’am” or the heavy handed pseudo hick accent but this guy pissed me off.

“Boy,” I spat out the word, “if you’re a soldier then I’m a supermodel. If you have an actual order to appropriate these chickens I want to see your commanding officer and I want payment.” He hesitated for long enough that I knew I was right — this guy never met a Drill Sargent in his life. I’ve got military on both sides of my family and there’s something about boot camp that just never wears off a man, much less a kid less than five years out.

“Get the hell out of here before I call Lieutenant Hooper,” he’s the Army’s guy in Davis Square, “and he kicks your ass to the harbor.”

His face got hard and cold and for a second I thought things were going to get ugly. You could see this kid doing the math — here’s an overweight middle aged woman in bare feet. He could take me. And he could have. All the bluster drained out of me just that fast and he saw me come to the same conclusion.

Just then Paul clambered up onto the roof. For those of you who have never met Paul, he’s nearly six and a half feet tall and broad at the shoulders. The guy took a long look at Paul. I took that opportunity to grab a shovel and raise it up in a threatening pose. That was enough. He ran.

(For those of you wondering, Paul had had to take the time to drop April with Ms. Bessler before he came charging to the rescue. Yes, yes, the smart thing would have been for me to stay with April while he climbed up. Yes, yes, I know. Hindsight.)

I have to wonder how many folks he’s fooled with that act? There are a lot of “victory gardens” around — he’s probably taken off with a lot of food that way. I wonder why? It’s not like anyone is going hungry right now. Maybe he’s just a black marketeer? Maybe he’s just greedy? Maybe he just has a weird fondness for chickens? (Ew! Grossed myself out there.)

Still, the chickens now get a human guard when they scratch on the roof.