it's a Mad Max world

Three days after digging a grave during a pandemic, I got a text. "Can you help me catch a chicken with a steel dart shot through his chest?"

We got to my mother's house to find her sitting by the back door holding a string attached to a stick propping up a milk crate.

"This is what the Humane Society told me to do. They wouldn't send anyone," she said.

We took away the milk crate and set up our more advanced and sophisticated chicken-apprehension contraption; a dog kennel with a string tied to the door. It immediately filled up with hens, while this guy, lower on the pecking order, strolled around looking for bugs. He seemed fine, clucking around the yard as if it were perfectly normal to be run through with a steel dart. We could see the orange cone on the end of the dart poking out from behind his wing, and the tip coming out of his breast. After the hens cleared out all the bait, he came over to see what was going on and we had him.

There is one vet on the island who treats chickens, and luckily they were still open. 

"But we can't take surrendered wild animals right now, we can only treat him as a pet," they said.

"Okay, let's do that. He seems fine, except for the razor sticking out of his chest," I said, "And screw that guy with the dart gun, you know?"

"What name should I put down for him?" 

My mother yelled, from the kitchen, "DARTAGNON."

An hour later, we were sitting outside the vet's office with a chicken in a cardboard box. There were signs taped everywhere to wait in the car. A vet tech in a face mask came out to take the box and said it shouldn't take long. While we waited in the car, they popped the orange cone off, cleaned the rod, pulled it out through his chest, and glued the punctures shut. My mother walked around the corner to the grocery store to pick up dinner, and we were sitting in the car eating fried chicken when they came back outside with Dartagnon. "Oh my god, don't let him see this," my mom said, hiding the evidence.

They gave us the dart for a police report. The receptionist was fuming as she signed us out, curbside. 

"I tell you, if I caught the person shooting chickens with darts, I'd take that blow gun away and shoot them. The police could sort it all out later." 

"That's the plan," we agreed.

fucking evil

We put the chicken back in the kennel to recover. My mother looked at the packet of antibiotic pills, unsure about how to get them into a wild rooster. I cracked one in half, wadded them up into little balls of bread, and dropped them through the bars onto his head. He ate them all up in half a second. Easy.

bucket of chicken

My chicken karma is reset, after losing that little black hen. Now we get to figure out who's walking around shooting neighborhood animals. A QUEST.

How’s the pandemic going? 

I love isolation so much. We have tiled the bathroom, brewed beer, baked and knitted and sewn. Zenny has a desk for school. For Christmas I subscribed the kids to 6 months of craft boxes, and Leif got a very timely soap-making kit. It’s been a much-appreciated recharge.

But the call came in, and I’m back at work this week, half-time. Evidently the building needs to be cleaned every day even though nobody is in there using the toilet, and our janitor has called in sick, so we're taking turns going in. I am just happy to have job security, even if it means scrubbing urinals for no reason.

The tourist quarantine started on Friday. Only 200 people flew in for the entire day, most of them residents, so I guess it’s working.

We had the first arrests for breaking stay-at-home orders - two people who refused to leave the beach park. One of them threw rocks at the police officers. This is not a good line of reasoning to take with police, folks. Don’t do that.

We had our first stuck-in-close-quarters murders; a young mom and her baby, stabbed by her boyfriend.

First confirmed case of the virus in our town came from an employee at the hospital a minute’s jog from my house. Today a few first responders downtown tested positive, too. This is no good.


At least I get to bring home a wagonload of books from work this week. The kids have requested books on home science experiments. Oh no.

Make do

Outside of the house

Went out once to a grocery store over the weekend, turned around and left without touching anything. The small-store shoppers were finally taking things seriously and walking in unnerving 6-foot bubbles through picked-over shelves with masked employees. You could almost hear everyone holding their breath as they passed each other. Feels different out there, I’m going to stay home until we’re down to rice and MREs.

On Monday Mike’s office-mate’s sister was sent home for showing symptoms and was tested for the virus. Mike still hasn’t been approved to work from home.

In the middle of the night on Tuesday, someone set fire to our town’s welfare office. I’m guessing case processing hasn’t been going well over there.

Inside the house 

In the spirit of austerity, I pulled out all my yarn and fabric for inventory. I’m not a stash collector, so it’s mostly scraps and garbage yarn people passed off to me, but there were a few nice skeins and a pristine package of flannel I bought at Purl Soho when I was in New York 10 years ago. Zenny and I sewed it into a simple quilt top. We don’t have batting, but we have heavy backing, and we’re working on our running stitch. It’ll do.

I went downstairs to look for eggs (the neighborhood chickens like my basement)  and found a dying hen. For the rest of the day, I soaked her and coaxed her and consulted the internet for advice, but there isn’t much to be done. They die of it quickly. We tried, though. I deleted the post about this; I don’t want a cry for help with a dying chicken sitting in my archives to run across later. Poor thing.

Got mad at the big painting and put it in time out. Back to small bites.

Almost out of milk. We have a 10lb bag of goat milk powder from the feed store that was being used as kitten formula. Pretty sure feed store kid milk is safe for humans, if it’s safe for kittens. We will find out.

The winds from the volcano shifted and I’ve picked up a dry cough. I don’t like that.

Grounded

Got the call on Thursday that library staff needs to stay home, but "be available" (no day drinking or flying away to a bunker in Utah). I pulled out a bigger canvas to work on for a couple weeks.

On Friday I went out for milk, and the local grocery store was totally normal, except for the paper towel and pasta shelves. The music on the overhead radio paused long enough to mention the 9pm curfew starting that night, and everyone completely ignored it. It was weird that nobody noticed that things are weird.

The governor is tearing his hair out about all the people going to the beach and having cookouts, the line at Costco is still wrapping around the parking lot, the entire island of Kauai is closed, and residents on Molokai are standing around with protest signs at the airport. In my neighborhood, things look normal, but there has been some distant drunk screaming and whiffs of weed. I wonder how many people are going to be murdered by their domestic partners by the end of this.

Our house is busy and comfortable, with chickens to feed, yard work to do, renovations to work on, beer to brew. We've got fresh eggs and fresh bread. The kids have been choosing different workout videos to try in the evenings, and I feel like I've been beaten with a bag of rocks. Working on my post-apocalyptic battle physique, one 10-minute yogalates video at a time.

Over on instagram, artists are posting paintings of toilet paper and toaster ovens. "Paint the beauty in the things around you! Anything can be a painting!" So I painted a big dead cockroach.  I'm about to lose all the new followers I got with those cute cat paintings, I thought, and posted it anyway.

Sorry. Here is a chick.

Working on a larger painting of some dying gardenias from my garden. Withered flowers have more character. I appreciate the down time, but friends are getting sick, losing jobs, and my nonverbal cousin picked up an ominous fever from his group home and is back with my aunt now. I'm worried about a few people. But I'm not clicking on those articles on "how to survive being at home with your kids" (wine and video games LOL). Stop it, already.

Seven

On Friday I got a whisper in the ear halfway through toddler time to say all library programs were cancelled going forward. We finished quacking and I said goodbye to my babies for the foreseeable future.

On Saturday morning we were lining up containers of sanitizing wipes and counting our boxes of gloves, reading a 6-page list of directions from the state librarian. “Throw away inter-office envelopes instead of reusing.” But handling books someone has coughed into is still fine. Got it.

On Sunday I went to Walmart at 6:30am for birthday stuff and had a look at the panic shopping; all the grains, cereals, canned goods, and snacks were gone, but they were still stocked on baking goods, dairy, juices, and coffee. The paper aisles were bare, but the party section was full of paper plates and napkins as usual. By Sunday night, schools were canceled. My car decided to groan and die. Oh no you don’t, I am not getting trapped in a pandemic, I do not know how to steal a motorcycle yet.

On Monday the car reluctantly started and I took it to the shop early in the morning. One employee was running the place, and I was the only person drinking from the Starbucks thermoses while the battery was changed. I knitted and listened to podcasts while PANDEMIC 2020 filled the giant tv in the lounge. It was weird. By afternoon I was getting texts about an employee testing positive at Kualoa Ranch - the employee’s family member works with Mike, and the kids of ranch employees go to my mother’s school. The testing station was inundated and had to turn people away, they’re still waiting on the first wave of results while asymptomatic dumbasses like me are sneaking to Walmart and hanging out in the VW service center.

It’s Tuesday, and the governor just announced that the libraries are closed. It doesn’t even matter because I took vacation leave anyway - today my girl turns SEVEN.

This kid is lawful neutral. She’d be lawful good if she were sweeter, but she’d lock you out of the bunker to save the group. She might send someone out to get what’s left of you later, though. She is quick to laugh, but sharply aware of insult, and she’ll stomp away to be by herself if she’s mad. She‘s a benevolent enforcer - everyone gets a portion before we eat, everyone takes a turn - but she’ll think hard and ask for an explanation if the rules don’t seem right. She reads Calvin and Hobbes in the car, and lays on my arm while we read a chapter of Harry Potter every night. She is more sociable than I am, quicker to hug, easy to cuddle up to. She hates blood - even the word blood - but she tries to hide it. She’s smart and funny, and I love her so much. I look forward to her growing out of the knock-knock jokes, though.

And while all this has been happening, I painted an iron horse. “I need a meaningful object,” I told my mother, snooping around her cabinets. The iron horse with the tiny leather saddle is not a meaningful object, but it’s an object I am inexplicably attracted to and always trying to steal. So I painted it. There, it’s mine now.

Chicks

Back to work this week. Whatever virus prevention people are doing, it does not include avoiding the public library. Or Costco. I stopped by for milk after a mid-week dentist’s appointment and the place looked like the day before Superbowl. There were minor scuffles over carts. A pregnant lady in a mask tried to fight me for a cart I was retrieving for her, then ran away with it and wiped the spot I’d touched. I get it now, this is why people are hoarding. Not to survive a plague, but to survive the other shoppers. 

And that is why I now have a 10-lb bag of pancake mix and 3 month's worth of pasta.

Painted the new chicks over the weekend. They are so cute I want to smash them.

7x9, the least practical size for framing

butts so fluffy 

tiny yellow comb

I could happily make my living just painting chickens. And I might get my chance, the way things are going.

How's the scene in your parts, folks? 

Cats and doilies

Stuck in the house, day 7. Painted another portrait of Mjolnir. I’ve decided I like tiny heads on wide grey backgrounds.

 HEY CATS, pose for me.

Thanks.

I’ve also been knitting. It’s another doily. I never planned to become a doily knitter, but that is the world we live in now. Hats mean I’m contentedly watching people get murdered with swords. Cardigans mean I’m plotting something. Doilies mean I am stuck on the couch. You can’t really stop and start with a complicated bit of round lacework, so you just plow through until you’re done. And then the cats block it for you.

Proof of life: I scared the mailman, so I added a beauty filter.

Such beauty, very wow.

I am still tired.

Strep cats

Taiwan cancelled the robotics event, but the airlines didn't, so now everyone on the team is out $1000. Before I could be bothered by this, the kids and I came down with fevers and coughing, and we got to tell the doctor that yes, we had been around airports, and now I'm getting phone calls from the CDC. Don’t worry, it’s strep, not plague. All the streps that are fit to strep - throat, sinus, skin. Did you know you can get strep infections in your skin? I DID NOT. The only bandaids we have are novelty ones shaped like strips of raw bacon, which isn’t much of a disguise. And hey, strep can make you barf, too. I got the variety that comes with concussive sneezing, which is at least the one with the most comedic value. Especially when we’re eating soup.

March is going great.

Silver lining, I'm home making lots of tiny cat paintings.

I don’t like the red one.

By the time this passes, the epidemic will probably be over, and we will step out into the empty streets of a Cormac McCarthy novel, wheeling our carts through the echoing aisles of Costco, which are fully stocked except for the shelves of toilet paper. Why all the toilet paper, folks? You cannot eat toilet paper. Inevitably, though, we will end up having to fight the toilet paper people, who actually did somehow manage to survive thanks to their barricades of Charmin.

Anyway, while all this has been happening, one of the chickens managed to squirrel away three eggs before Mr. Handsome and his cock-a-doodler were relocated three weeks ago, and now there are fresh-baked chicks peeping around the back yard. They rolled down the basement stairs and got stuck in my studio, so I had to endure a pecking from their mother to carry them back out. Good thing we have about 200 of these bacon bandaids.

I am tired.