Football and the chickens who resemble them

Way back in the 1980s, in the family home in Newfoundland, my grandfather and I would sometimes watch football games when Indiana or Arizona State were playing. Grandpa wasn't much of a sports fan, but he played the game in high school and enjoyed cheering for his alma maters from time to time. "You want to be the kicker. That guy sits on the side until he's needed, and he hardly ever gets clobbered. But the rest of us had to spend the game playing on our noses - and this was back before face guards." We sat together on the big recliner, watching the little colored helmets run back and forth. He cheered when his team scored, and I cheered when the medics were called out.

We moved to Arizona when I was 8, and that was the last time I sat with my grandpa for a football game. It was strange and fortuitous, then, that he came to visit this month and I ended up hosting a family dinner right on Super Bowl Sunday. I don't watch sports, but another household motto is don't crap on other people's yum-yums, so instead of getting on twitter to brag about how little I care about this thing that so many people like, I play the game on the laptop while cooking ribs, chicken wings, banana pies, bacon-wrapped hors d'oeuvres, potato salad, and I lay out the table with beer and soda and chips for a family get-together. I am on board with food holidays. On this day, I sat with my grandad watching football for the first time in almost 30 years and got to hear his familiar cries of "OH HO!" while Zenny sat on his lap and cheered along, looking so much like I did back in Newfoundland. And I was just so damn happy, folks. 

So that was the good news this week. The bad news came in the mail along with a brochure on how to teach your chickens good manners before they start earning fines for being noise nuisances. The young rooster has begun crowing all day and humping everyone, and all the hens began screaming their heads off this week as they laid eggs for the first time, and then the nice little old lady next door finally had to draw the line when they started rampaging around murdering rats in her back yard. The coop isn't big enough to house them anymore, we can't get them out of the tree without a broom, I am afraid to clip their wings because I read that if you do it wrong they will bleed to death, and this whole situation is OUT OF CONTROL. I DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO BE A CHICKEN LADY. More than that, I don't want to be a bad neighbor. I'm so embarrassed. Every SKRAW makes me want to bury my face in the couch pillows. Last night I dreamed I was trying to re-home them, but in my rear-view mirror I saw children stomping them, snapping their legs, poking their eyes, and I woke up crying with my pillow clutched like a broken chicken, trying to hold its eyeballs in. This is no good.

So they're all locked in the basement today* until some co-workers with farmland can be strong-armed into adopting them. We will keep the two nicest, quietest, most-egg-layingest, and the rest need to shut up and settle down before we punt them into the gulch with the wild chickens. (Ok, no, we are not going to abandon our animals - mostly because it's heartbreakingly cruel and irresponsible, but also because they would probably stage a hostile takeover and organize a ferocious rat-chasing mob, terrorizing the neighborhood cats and small children, because they are twice as big as any of the skinny feral chickens.) 

Between the two things - the football and the chickens - I would not have guessed my brain would be laying down good memories in the the long-term lobe over a sporting event.  It's been that kind of week.

*the safe, empty, well-stocked with food and water, equipped with dirt-covered landings for egg-laying, pre-renovation basement. Not, like, a pile of junk for them to crap on and knock onto themselves. That basement is going to be my art studio some day, though, and NOT A GIANT CHICKEN COOP.