Chicken | All that makes you…

Colored chicks are banned from our country club this Easter

The prejudice began when the parents started making small talk with “Farm Lady.” They began asking, “How did you dye them?, Do you dip them? Does it hurt the little babies? Will they stay that color? Will the other animals shun them because they don’t look like them?”

Club management asked the “farm lady” to stop bringing them. We go to the clubs Easter brunch and egg hunt because we have three little boys who want to see the cool neon alternative chicks. They are amazing. “Farm Lady” brings bunnies, snakes, iguanas, and other critters, and she used to bring a few colored chicks and ducks.

She is always so patient as she explains to the parents that they don’t “dip” them. That they inject the egg with food coloring, (just like we have in our human food and the same way scientist track wild bird movements). That only the chicks down is colored and it will fall out soon and then they will be back to their regular color. She explains that they are raised to be shared for a couple of weeks, as part of her traveling petting zoo, and then they will go off to live at a local farm just like a regular chicken or duck.

For crying out loud, I want to shout, “You just fed your kids processed chicken nuggets! Those “nugget chickens” were raised in horrible conditions and probably never even got to walk in actual grass. Chances are they ground off their beaks so they couldn’t peck each other to death. They were likely injected with hormones to produce larger breasts. Shut your traps.

The “Farm Lady” rocks. I was raised on a farm. I have asked her questions. I have stood next to her while three boys have to pet, hold and usually figure out a way to “wear” each of her critters. She is patient and kind and makes sure the kids are gentle and she herself is gentle. She gives these country club kids a chance to touch and hold animals that most people 100 years ago had in their backyards. Animals they had to care for and then eventually eat.

She gives kids an opportunity to touch other beings. It may lead to some of these children gaining more respect for creatures that we share the world with. It’s just a green chicken.

My boys looked forward to these neon, fluffy, make-you-happier-than-a-Cadbury-Egg- chicks. Do you know how happy it makes me when my kids are more excited about something they don’t get to eat and that causes one of their combined 16 cavities, (per our last family dentist appointment). Do not judge. Yes, they brush.

If you enjoyed this you may enjoy, “Country Club, Bible Belt, gated Community…Let’s Give Her the WTF License Plate.”

https://allthatmakesyou.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/country-club-bible-belt-gated-community-lets-give-her-the-wtf-license-plate/

Or this one…

https://allthatmakesyou.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/exploding-eggs-and-nakedness/

or “The $hit my kid says is better than your dad’s $hit.”

Follow me and press the button..

Before you start chewing me out…They are not being sold.

http://www.ehow.com/how_6759132_color-baby-chickens.html

Dyeing Easter Chicks Raises Concern Over Animal Welfare (ecorazzi.com)

There is a reason I have a sense of humor about my life with our three boys. If I survived the ridiculous childhood I had, they will be fine. I am going to share with you one of my own childhood stories. Sit down and I will try and paint a mental image and while you laugh at my misery, please remember that nothing is funny until the smell of rotten eggs is gone.

Our family usually hung out at “The Farm” all day on Sundays. We lingered in my grandmother‘s massive kitchen cooking dinner from all that came from the garden and the barn. My Mamaw made a cake from scratch and without a recipe. They had three daughters and the daughters had six granddaughters and eventually, much later, a grandson. Picture my childhood being like an episode of “Designing Women“.

When I was about eight my grandmother told us girls to go get some fresh eggs for a cake. I now know, since their wisdom is immediately bestowed upon we women the moment we become mothers, that they were just getting rid of us.

My grandparents always had a couple hundred chickens, among other animals. I sincerely thought I was Laura Ingalls. I had long brown hair and I loved a dress, (still do) but I fancied myself a tomboy. My cousin, who is about the same age, and I headed off towards the chicken and cow barn.

Since we were sent on a “busy” mission and the eggs had already been gotten for the day the chicken’s nesting boxes were empty. We kept looking and finally found a nest that was full. I held up the hem of my flowered sundress and my cousin loaded up all of the eggs and then I held them close.

I walked across the cow pasture, climbed a fence (as the gate was to heavy to open) walked across the yard (so as to shake them up really good). When I walked in the kitchen, proud of the major score of eggs we found, NOT in the chickens boxes on the wall but in the corner in a nest on the ground my grandmother gasped, “My Lord child! You didn’t get those eggs from that old nest by the cows your Papaw was supposed to get rid of, did you?!!!”

And then the eggs began EXPLODING! Exploding in my sundress and the stench of rotten eggs was less offensive than the dead baby chickens that were all over me when I let go of the hem of my sundress which was less offensive than being stripped naked in front of my entire family and hosed off in the front yard.

It took twenty-five years before I would eat an egg. Go ahead and laugh, I am.