At Least They're Committed

How the hell did they get out? Thankfully I noticed them coursing through the deep gray dawn before I let loose of Max. I’m confident I closed the gate last night, but it was already dark so I must have failed to fully secure the latch. No racoons were nearby, and I’m grateful not to have walked outside on this lovely, crisp, almost-autumn morning to gold, red, silver and white feathers strewn across the yard; blood, bulbous chicken bodies and severed heads mingled throughout.

Damn. Tired. Always tired. Always, always tired.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how the mind fucks with you when it has nothing better to do? How many hours of sleep have I lost with my brain grappling to find something to stress about? Does anyone older than 30 ever truly get a good night’s sleep? Let me qualify that: Does anyone older than 30 ever truly get a good night’s sleep without alcohol or drugs?

“Agnes! Stop being such a bitch!” The Cream Legbar is attempting her own form of decapitation on one of the younger — albeit larger — chickens. “If you weren’t so scrawny, you’d be dinner!” I warn, as if she understands or cares what I think or say.

And when I do sleep my brain doesn’t, which I guess is true of everybody. But my dreams are exhausting and bits stick with me and I never wake up feeling refreshed and/or eager for the day. Just puzzled, mostly.

In last night’s dream, we couldn’t get to our son’s graduation — we had no way to get there because the tires on our car just stopped moving. “I just had it serviced.” (I had in fact.) “Why is it doing this again?” (It hasn’t — it has been working fine.) In real life, we’re going to fly to Philly and rent a car from there to attend. And we’ll Uber to the airport.

“They” were there again last night, though. No surprise! They are always there. I can’t tell you who they are because I don’t know or don’t remember. They’re just people, all around me, closing in on me and demanding things from me, the manner of which I also don’t recall.

I toss ‘Happy Harvest’ in the ladies’ path. They squawk, scamper and flap in terror then quickly circle around like, “Oh, shit, wait, those are treats!”

Every night it’s the same, I’m in crowds of people and although I neither like nor dislike them, they’re needy and demanding and I’m always trying to get somewhere or find something and they won’t let me even though they’re not physically holding me back. They’re just in my way.

No eggs, yet again. Agnes’ only value is her pretty blue eggs, but she has chosen not to lay any this week thus far. Like I said, too scrawny to be eaten.

Ellen and I did tea and tarot a couple weeks ago, and all the cards came up with ‘me’ surrounded by swords and/or pinned down by blades, and all but one had other people in them. It means that I am being tethered, manipulated and controlled. The one card? It showed The Emperor. That, the reader explained, represented the singular creature who was keeping me subdued.

I’m going to rearrange the chicken coop — with help from D — push it to one side of the yard, add the newer ‘play area’ to the front and get a big-ass fence to lock the chickens in so they won’t have the run of the backyard any longer. Max will be ever so grateful! As will I to not have to hose chicken shit off the porch every day.

Sigh. Why must life be filled with such tedious futility?

I head back into the sunroom, shutting and bolting the door behind me. The ‘little’ girls should start joining Agnes, Buttercup, Wendy and Winnie in laying soon enough. A good distraction, I guess, the anticipation of eggs. Woohoo!

Now for constructing that fence. I’ll start to research. Yes, safe and sound and securely locked in, the chickens shall be. And just like me, they’ll never be free.