Nov 28th, 2010
9 am: Am I going mad or is M raising the shower head by half an inch per day? I keep lowering it but it always seems to get higher. Was careful to watch his eyes when exiting the bathroom but couldn't be absolutely sure of his expression. Will bide my time...
10 am: The mosquitoes have launched a full-scale attack! No wonder we haven't seen any for weeks now -- they were busy consolidating their forces, preparing for this day. We've secured our perimeters but cannot discover how they are getting in. Also, more ominously, they seem to be unusually robust. M zapped one with the racket-zapper in the bathroom, picked it up off the floor where it lay quite burnt (we thought) and chucked it in the toilet. Moments later when one grazed his head he said, "Could it be...?", looked in the toilet and saw that the 'dead' mosquito had disappeared. M hit it again with the zapper and kept zapping it this time till it shrivelled up and turned black.
Noon: My mother-in-law brought a plate of something up for us that got Noonie excited 'cause she thought it was strawberry cake. Turned out to be raw meat, a Lebanese delicacy and one of my mother-in-law's specialties. She whips it up till it looks just like pink gelatto.
Discovered we were out of pita bread (absolutely necessary to eat the raw meat with) so M sent the natoor's son to get us some from the shop around the corner. The natoor (building superintendent, in a purely Lebanese sense – his duties pretty much amount to taking out the garbage and washing down the steps) has gone home to Syria for a week or two and left his son in charge of looking after our building. The son can’t be much more than eight years old and he is living in the little apartment down on the ground floor by himself while his father is gone. He only comes up to my midriff.
4 pm: Doorbell rang, a woman I've never seen before looming in the peephole. Introduced herself abruptly as neighbour from downstairs. Was steaming mad, said there was water leaking into her master bedroom. Fussed around quite angrily, insisted I come downstairs to view the damage, which she said had been going on for a month. Also showed me damage in another of their bedrooms from last winter when our flat was being renovated. I was sympathetic but didn't actually say I was sorry because this is the first I've heard about it and so can hardly be accused of negligence (I wasn't even living in the country last winter during the renovations). Why didn't she tell me a month ago? Everyone in this building is completely cracked, I'm telling you.
5 pm: Suddenly realized that the angry downstairs neighbour would be the same woman I accidentally trapped between floors in the elevator last month when I turned off the generator. How was I to know she was in there and that they would have to pry open the doors and haul her up by her armpits? Still, kind of explains her shirty attitude.
Nov 30th, 2010
10 am: Apparently at my father-in-law’s request, a man has painted the elevator door on our landing a hideous poo brown. It doesn’t match our apartment door, it doesn’t match the walls, but it does sort of match a bruise I have on my thigh from a shopping cart.
7 pm: Called my parents-in-law and said I was bringing a cake down to eat with them as soon as it came out of the oven.
Half an hour later got a phone call from my father-in-law. “What happened? Aren’t you coming?”
“The cake’s not done yet,” I said. “I mean, I did say I would bring it when it came out of the oven.”
“Oh. I thought maybe I’d misunderstood you.”
Fifteen minutes later the kids and I rang their doorbell. We found them sitting in front of the television with the plates already set out and the kettle on. They like cake. They asked me what kind it was. I said, “Banana and zucchini.” They burst into laughter. “Zucchini! That’s a good one! Can you imagine a zucchini cake? Ha ha ha!”
I said, “No, really. It has zucchini in it.”
Well, I wish you could have seen their faces. They had never heard of putting zucchini in a cake. I told them huffily that it was a well-established cake ingredient where I come from. I wasn’t actually sure if it was well-established or not. I know I used to have a very good chocolate cake recipe that had zucchini in it so when I ran short of bananas this time I’d grated some of the little local courgettes into the batter.
The cake tasted fine but I don’t think my father-in-law really enjoyed it. He ate very slowly, working through his slice with a thoughtful, sombre expression. My mother-in-law is quite strict with what she feeds him and zealously trys to cut all the fat and sugar out of his diet. But he gets a sort of free pass to eat whatever someone else has made and he normally has two pieces of cake when he's at our house. I'm sure it made his day when I called to say I was bringing round a cake. He probably waited for it in a state of happy anticipation. He laughed with such delight at my wit when I announced that the cake contained a certain quantity of vegetable. And at the end of it all to find it wasn't a joke at all! Poor man.
8:30 pm: The new paint has caused the elevator door to stick. We arrived at our floor and found we couldn't get out of the lift so I threw myself at the door with a cry of "You'll never take me alive!", whereupon it burst open with a ripping sound and I fell out onto the landing with one slipper gone and my t-shirt riding up my back. Later I realized we could have gone down to the floor below and got out.
Dec 3rd, 2010
9 am: Father-in-law having very bad week. Ruptured a disc in his back and was told he should have immediate surgery. In the midst of this he was faced with my zucchini cake. And last night while he was out his faithful old Chevy Blazer died and he was forced to abandon it and come home in a taxi.
4 pm: Shirty neighbour has invited me to tea! Ha!
I left her a note (when no one answered the door bell) saying I was about to run water in the bathroom that we think was causing the problem and to let me know if she found any water coming down. She called me later and thanked me for ‘caring’ and asked me if I’d like to come round for tea sometime.
I don’t, though. Scary image of her livid face still twitching in my memory circuits.
Dec 5th, 2010
6 pm: Went out to a cafe with M, just the two of us. His mind is always preoccupied with work, multi-million dollar projects and people who are getting the sack, but to my everlasting disappointment he doesn't like to talk about it. I have the opposite problem: I love to talk but have no material. I considered telling him how I'd finally found where the weird smell in the bathroom was coming from but he was eating a cream-filled cake which didn't lend itself to the tale. And so we watched people walking by on the street and remarked to one another how young everyone seems to be getting.
7pm: After the cafe drove down to the beach road and took a walk. The beach itself was mostly deserted except for a group of men on plastic chairs playing cards under the palm frond roof of a make-shift hut. A little Honda generator buzzed power for three light bulbs strung on a wire over their heads. We went down to the water and listened to the waves and I recalled the time I came across a dead goat washed up on the sand there.
8 pm: My key for the building wouldn’t work, which was not surprising since it has never worked. The building isn’t locked during the day so it’s not usually a problem. While M parked the car I stood there jigging the key around and cursing softly but the water-leak neighbour happened to come home just then and with a cheery salutation used her key to let us in.
I think Nawras is back from Syria because as we stepped into the elevator I saw his elbow, or an elbow that looks uncannily like his, propping up an unseen body on the floor in front of the telly in his room.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
My Phone
I’m thinking about having my cell phone stolen. I’ll just go out one day to a cafe with it and “accidently” leave it on a table while I go to the ladies’ room or for a leisurely stroll through the shops and by the time I come back for it the hateful little slab will be someone else’s problem.
I wasn’t always this way. I loved the phone I used to have. It was one of the simplest models available at the time and let me tell you, me and that phone understood each other perfectly. It lived to serve, at least most of the time. There was one regrettable period in which it spontaneously called people with the redial button when I went to the toilet. I suppose it must have panicked, finding the front jeans pocket in which I always carried it suddenly squashing down around it with devastating force. Whatever may have been the motive, I cannot pretend to have enjoyed hearing a small voice saying, “Hello? Hello?” when I was sitting on the toilet and having to decide, after a confused moment, whether to extract the phone from my pocket and try to explain to the other party what had occurred or to play dead and not make a sound. Remaining perfectly silent, of course, isn’t always possible in such circumstances. Luckily redial usually meant it was a friend on the other end and I would be able to laugh the whole thing off with them. There was one toilet call to my father-in-law, however, and for that I elected to play dead. Foolish of course, since the man worries incessantly about family members coming to harm, so for him to get an unexpected call from me and then hear nothing but silence (I most sincerely, ardently hope) on the other end simply prompted him to ring back immediately and ask in an agitated voice what was going on and was everyone was alright?
Excepting the redial fiasco my phone was an exemplary communication device. Sadly, with the passing of the years it grew fuzzy beneath the screen and chipped around its edges. Finally the battery began to fall out at unexpected moments and I decided to buy a new phone. Why I didn’t get another model like it is a question for which I have no satisfactory answer. I just thought I’d get a really good phone and that it would last me for ages. I went for another Nokia, my faith in them unshakable (I thought) but instead of browsing their lower-end phones went straight to their top model and that was the fatal mistake.
I like appliances and electronics that are simple. The simpler the better. I once sent M all over town to try and find me a microwave that had only a dial in the way of controls. Believe me, if I could find a cell phone with a dial I would buy it. I couldn’t even answer my new high-tech phone at first. That should have been a sign to return it immediately to the store and get a simpler model, wouldn’t you think? Actually I still can’t answer it with any degree of promptitude. The phone directs me to slide my thumb over an animated arrow in the direction indicated when I have an incoming call, and I do as it says, but it doesn’t work. I slide and slide and nothing happens and the person eventually hangs up. If it’s M he gets quite testy and right away rings the landline. “Why don’t you have your phone on you?” he asks. “What’s the point of having a cell phone if you don’t use it?”
It has occurred to me that the phone is trying to sabotage my marriage. But it’s not just the incoming call answer mechanism that frustrates me. It’s a hundred other things. I can’t complain anymore about it to M – I don’t want to make him cry in front of the kids. He’s offered to try to sell it for me but when I asked him what he thought we could get for it and his answer was about one third of what I paid for it I crossed my arms and said, “I will learn to love it.”
To be fair, I am prepared to believe it is a great phone in the right person’s hands. And by ‘right person’ I mean someone who doesn’t carry an electromagnetic cloud around them at all times that scrambles every computing device in a three meter radius. I just have to be in the same room as a computer for it to crash and the hapless owner to shake his head and say, “Gee, it’s never done that before.” If the army knew my worth, boy, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this blog, that's for sure.
Anyhow, the way I see it I’m stuck with this phone until it a) dies, b) gets lost, or c) gets stolen. It looks the picture of health so I’m not going to pin my hopes on a natural death. If I lose it I look bad and M might start reminiscing about some of my losing streaks like the ‘02/’03 season when I left five different wallets at various stores and public places all over Calgary. If the phone gets stolen, however, we all win. People will feel bad for me and M will make sure I am never again in possession of the kind of phone that anyone wants to pinch. If and when the day comes that I find myself rid of it I’m going to go down to the mobile phone shop, slap my wallet on the counter, and say, “Bring me your cheapest phone, my good man. Spare no effort in scouring the shop and back room for the model that does nothing, nothing whatsoever but dial a number. And whatever you come across, ask yourself this: could a monkey call his mother from this phone? If the answer is no, keep looking.”
I wasn’t always this way. I loved the phone I used to have. It was one of the simplest models available at the time and let me tell you, me and that phone understood each other perfectly. It lived to serve, at least most of the time. There was one regrettable period in which it spontaneously called people with the redial button when I went to the toilet. I suppose it must have panicked, finding the front jeans pocket in which I always carried it suddenly squashing down around it with devastating force. Whatever may have been the motive, I cannot pretend to have enjoyed hearing a small voice saying, “Hello? Hello?” when I was sitting on the toilet and having to decide, after a confused moment, whether to extract the phone from my pocket and try to explain to the other party what had occurred or to play dead and not make a sound. Remaining perfectly silent, of course, isn’t always possible in such circumstances. Luckily redial usually meant it was a friend on the other end and I would be able to laugh the whole thing off with them. There was one toilet call to my father-in-law, however, and for that I elected to play dead. Foolish of course, since the man worries incessantly about family members coming to harm, so for him to get an unexpected call from me and then hear nothing but silence (I most sincerely, ardently hope) on the other end simply prompted him to ring back immediately and ask in an agitated voice what was going on and was everyone was alright?
Excepting the redial fiasco my phone was an exemplary communication device. Sadly, with the passing of the years it grew fuzzy beneath the screen and chipped around its edges. Finally the battery began to fall out at unexpected moments and I decided to buy a new phone. Why I didn’t get another model like it is a question for which I have no satisfactory answer. I just thought I’d get a really good phone and that it would last me for ages. I went for another Nokia, my faith in them unshakable (I thought) but instead of browsing their lower-end phones went straight to their top model and that was the fatal mistake.
I like appliances and electronics that are simple. The simpler the better. I once sent M all over town to try and find me a microwave that had only a dial in the way of controls. Believe me, if I could find a cell phone with a dial I would buy it. I couldn’t even answer my new high-tech phone at first. That should have been a sign to return it immediately to the store and get a simpler model, wouldn’t you think? Actually I still can’t answer it with any degree of promptitude. The phone directs me to slide my thumb over an animated arrow in the direction indicated when I have an incoming call, and I do as it says, but it doesn’t work. I slide and slide and nothing happens and the person eventually hangs up. If it’s M he gets quite testy and right away rings the landline. “Why don’t you have your phone on you?” he asks. “What’s the point of having a cell phone if you don’t use it?”
It has occurred to me that the phone is trying to sabotage my marriage. But it’s not just the incoming call answer mechanism that frustrates me. It’s a hundred other things. I can’t complain anymore about it to M – I don’t want to make him cry in front of the kids. He’s offered to try to sell it for me but when I asked him what he thought we could get for it and his answer was about one third of what I paid for it I crossed my arms and said, “I will learn to love it.”
To be fair, I am prepared to believe it is a great phone in the right person’s hands. And by ‘right person’ I mean someone who doesn’t carry an electromagnetic cloud around them at all times that scrambles every computing device in a three meter radius. I just have to be in the same room as a computer for it to crash and the hapless owner to shake his head and say, “Gee, it’s never done that before.” If the army knew my worth, boy, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this blog, that's for sure.
Anyhow, the way I see it I’m stuck with this phone until it a) dies, b) gets lost, or c) gets stolen. It looks the picture of health so I’m not going to pin my hopes on a natural death. If I lose it I look bad and M might start reminiscing about some of my losing streaks like the ‘02/’03 season when I left five different wallets at various stores and public places all over Calgary. If the phone gets stolen, however, we all win. People will feel bad for me and M will make sure I am never again in possession of the kind of phone that anyone wants to pinch. If and when the day comes that I find myself rid of it I’m going to go down to the mobile phone shop, slap my wallet on the counter, and say, “Bring me your cheapest phone, my good man. Spare no effort in scouring the shop and back room for the model that does nothing, nothing whatsoever but dial a number. And whatever you come across, ask yourself this: could a monkey call his mother from this phone? If the answer is no, keep looking.”
Friday, November 12, 2010
What, me worry?
I try not to worry about political stuff when I’m here in Lebanon. I mean, what’s the point? I never understand what’s going on anyway. My in-laws watch the news all day long and they’ll let me know if there’s something to worry about. My father-in-law worries the most of anybody and as a consequence his nerves are completely shot. He’s like a gun-shy horse, always waiting with trembling knees for the next bang. It works out well for me, though. I sleep like a log knowing he’s a few floors below me fretting enough for the whole family.
Yesterday around dinner time I heard the noise of a crowd in the big intersection near our building and I looked down to see some sort of demonstration about to start. People were massing under the intersection’s bridge near the army tank which is always parked there with its attendant soldiers. Traffic had slowed to a crawl as people drifted in twos and threes toward the gathering point and up on top of the bridge I saw large banners being readied for hanging from the girder. Someone was setting up a sound system and makeshift podium.
I wondered what was going on. I wasn’t exactly worried but a certain disquiet crept over me. Political tensions have been running pretty high in the country lately and who knew what a demonstration might turn into? Things could get violent. Dusk was falling and the figures milling around in the semi-darkness underneath the bridge began to take on a menacing aspect. I had just decided to call my father-in-law to ask him what was happening when I heard the swell of voices chanting something in unison. It was a short, rhythmic chant which quickly grew in volume. I rushed back to the window and the first thing I saw was the twin banners now hanging unfurled from the bridge. They were huge, stretching down several meters each with an identical symbol in bright red that I could see clearly from my window. Their meaning was impossible to misinterpret.
They were tomatoes.
(Yup. M confirmed it later when he came home from work and saw the story on the news. It was a protest by the local vegetable sellers against the high source price of tomatoes.)
And so you see, this is why it’s really a waste of my energy to worry about anything around here.
Yesterday around dinner time I heard the noise of a crowd in the big intersection near our building and I looked down to see some sort of demonstration about to start. People were massing under the intersection’s bridge near the army tank which is always parked there with its attendant soldiers. Traffic had slowed to a crawl as people drifted in twos and threes toward the gathering point and up on top of the bridge I saw large banners being readied for hanging from the girder. Someone was setting up a sound system and makeshift podium.
I wondered what was going on. I wasn’t exactly worried but a certain disquiet crept over me. Political tensions have been running pretty high in the country lately and who knew what a demonstration might turn into? Things could get violent. Dusk was falling and the figures milling around in the semi-darkness underneath the bridge began to take on a menacing aspect. I had just decided to call my father-in-law to ask him what was happening when I heard the swell of voices chanting something in unison. It was a short, rhythmic chant which quickly grew in volume. I rushed back to the window and the first thing I saw was the twin banners now hanging unfurled from the bridge. They were huge, stretching down several meters each with an identical symbol in bright red that I could see clearly from my window. Their meaning was impossible to misinterpret.
They were tomatoes.
(Yup. M confirmed it later when he came home from work and saw the story on the news. It was a protest by the local vegetable sellers against the high source price of tomatoes.)
And so you see, this is why it’s really a waste of my energy to worry about anything around here.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Chickens and Their Heads
I was making chicken stock yesterday, onion and celery simmering in the pot, when I got the chicken out of the fridge and prepared to clean it. It was a whole chicken, packed by the supermarket on a foam tray and wrapped in plastic. Tap running, I pulled it from the plastic wrap to give it a wash when I dropped the bird with a startled "Ughh!" and jumped back with a pounding heart.
The chicken had a head.
I was glad no one was at home to witness the sorry spectacle of me taking fright like that. After all, I am supposed to be a tough farm girl and there is protocol to be observed. One does not go round shrieking at the sight of a dead animal. But in my defence, chickens you buy from the store aren't supposed to have heads still on them, especially not tucked underneath so you don't see it until you've lifted the thing up in your hands.
Maybe it awoke in me some dark memory of the time I tried to make a business of chickens. I was about fourteen and starting to appreciate the lucrative business opportunities open to one when the raw materials are provided free by their parents. I was already making a nice bit of money with the calves I raised every year on our farm. The trouble with the calves, though, was that I only saw a paycheck once a year. With chickens I figured I could get a steady cash flow by selling their eggs every week. I already had a flock of bantam chickens running loose around the farm but they were more like pets than anything else. What I needed were professional egg layers so I called up a proper egg farm and arranged to buy 20 of their hens.
I don't know whether I was duped and sold geriatric birds or what but those pea-brained featherbags didn't lay half the number of eggs they were supposed to. I gave them the best food and care any chicken could aspire to and all they did was grow fat. And man oh man, were they dumb. My brother used to call my bantam chickens slow-witted but after the egg-layers arrived he began to regard the bantams as competitive chess players. The egg layers had spent their entire lives indoors before I got them. The outdoor run I attached to their coop gave them a lot of enjoyment but they simply weren't used to being outside. Every movement near the coop sent them into an absolute panic. It soon became apparent that these chickens were no more than three of four neurons ahead of a dandelion in terms of brain development and when they sensed danger a primitive mental panic switch was thrown. The mechanism was clearly of the most rudimentary sort with only a fixed-period timer to regulate it. Once the switch was activated the birds would run around in circles and squawk at the top of their voices for ten minutes even if the thing that startled them in the first place immediately became identifiable as a wholly benign presence, such as myself carrying the feed pail. The birds would not shut up until the timer had run its course.
Those hens never got to laying many eggs. The day came when I decided to put seven or eight of them in the freezer and sell the rest. Our neighbour Albert came over to do the mercy killings and my sister, whom I had somehow talked into joining me in the chicken venture, stood with me to assist. Albert quickly and efficiently dispatched the first few hens and then suggested that we girls learn how to do it. I went first. Shaking like jello on a jackhammer I killed one chicken and handed the axe back to Albert so quickly I nearly cut his hand off. Theo came up for her turn. I could see she was having even a harder time than I was working up her nerve to do it. The chicken, which Albert was holding upside down, began to cackle hysterically and flap its wings. Albert gently suggested to Theo that she not delay any longer. Theo was fighting a tremendous inner battle and kept raising the axe only to lower it again slowly a few seconds later. Finally, with Albert's gentle persuasion she raised the axe and brought it down swiftly. But even then something in her couldn't go through with it and the axe merely bumped the chicken hard in the back of the head, causing it to squawk even louder. Theo tried to hand the axe back to Albert but he seemed to feel that since she had come this far she ought to finish the job. Again he positioned the bird and again Theo raised her axe. She had a calmer, steadier look in her eye and I thought she was really going to do it this time but she pulled up at the last moment so that for the second time the axe only clipped the bird soundly on the back of the head. Albert didn't resist this time when she pushed the axe back at him and fled to a safe distance.
Anyway, that was the end of the chicken business. I sold the rest of the hens to my friend's dad, who wanted them in spite of my warnings about their shiftless attitude toward egg-laying. The bantams lost their elevated status and once more became the dumbest animals on the farm. And one of the slaughtered hens, after we had brought them into the house for cleaning as soon as Albert was done, took a few years off my life when it suddenly scrambled to its feet in the kitchen sink and flapped its wings while craning its neck this way and that as though trying to look around the room with the head that was no longer there.
The lesson you should have learned from today's blog is this: the presence of a head on a chicken is no indication of life. There may be a head and no life. There may be a life but no head. (And if you don't believe me look up "Mike the Headless Chicken" on the internet and you'll find out about a young rooster who lived for a year and a-half without his head before tragically choking to death in an Arizona motel.) And now I'm tired of talking about chickens so good night.
The chicken had a head.
I was glad no one was at home to witness the sorry spectacle of me taking fright like that. After all, I am supposed to be a tough farm girl and there is protocol to be observed. One does not go round shrieking at the sight of a dead animal. But in my defence, chickens you buy from the store aren't supposed to have heads still on them, especially not tucked underneath so you don't see it until you've lifted the thing up in your hands.
Maybe it awoke in me some dark memory of the time I tried to make a business of chickens. I was about fourteen and starting to appreciate the lucrative business opportunities open to one when the raw materials are provided free by their parents. I was already making a nice bit of money with the calves I raised every year on our farm. The trouble with the calves, though, was that I only saw a paycheck once a year. With chickens I figured I could get a steady cash flow by selling their eggs every week. I already had a flock of bantam chickens running loose around the farm but they were more like pets than anything else. What I needed were professional egg layers so I called up a proper egg farm and arranged to buy 20 of their hens.
I don't know whether I was duped and sold geriatric birds or what but those pea-brained featherbags didn't lay half the number of eggs they were supposed to. I gave them the best food and care any chicken could aspire to and all they did was grow fat. And man oh man, were they dumb. My brother used to call my bantam chickens slow-witted but after the egg-layers arrived he began to regard the bantams as competitive chess players. The egg layers had spent their entire lives indoors before I got them. The outdoor run I attached to their coop gave them a lot of enjoyment but they simply weren't used to being outside. Every movement near the coop sent them into an absolute panic. It soon became apparent that these chickens were no more than three of four neurons ahead of a dandelion in terms of brain development and when they sensed danger a primitive mental panic switch was thrown. The mechanism was clearly of the most rudimentary sort with only a fixed-period timer to regulate it. Once the switch was activated the birds would run around in circles and squawk at the top of their voices for ten minutes even if the thing that startled them in the first place immediately became identifiable as a wholly benign presence, such as myself carrying the feed pail. The birds would not shut up until the timer had run its course.
Those hens never got to laying many eggs. The day came when I decided to put seven or eight of them in the freezer and sell the rest. Our neighbour Albert came over to do the mercy killings and my sister, whom I had somehow talked into joining me in the chicken venture, stood with me to assist. Albert quickly and efficiently dispatched the first few hens and then suggested that we girls learn how to do it. I went first. Shaking like jello on a jackhammer I killed one chicken and handed the axe back to Albert so quickly I nearly cut his hand off. Theo came up for her turn. I could see she was having even a harder time than I was working up her nerve to do it. The chicken, which Albert was holding upside down, began to cackle hysterically and flap its wings. Albert gently suggested to Theo that she not delay any longer. Theo was fighting a tremendous inner battle and kept raising the axe only to lower it again slowly a few seconds later. Finally, with Albert's gentle persuasion she raised the axe and brought it down swiftly. But even then something in her couldn't go through with it and the axe merely bumped the chicken hard in the back of the head, causing it to squawk even louder. Theo tried to hand the axe back to Albert but he seemed to feel that since she had come this far she ought to finish the job. Again he positioned the bird and again Theo raised her axe. She had a calmer, steadier look in her eye and I thought she was really going to do it this time but she pulled up at the last moment so that for the second time the axe only clipped the bird soundly on the back of the head. Albert didn't resist this time when she pushed the axe back at him and fled to a safe distance.
Anyway, that was the end of the chicken business. I sold the rest of the hens to my friend's dad, who wanted them in spite of my warnings about their shiftless attitude toward egg-laying. The bantams lost their elevated status and once more became the dumbest animals on the farm. And one of the slaughtered hens, after we had brought them into the house for cleaning as soon as Albert was done, took a few years off my life when it suddenly scrambled to its feet in the kitchen sink and flapped its wings while craning its neck this way and that as though trying to look around the room with the head that was no longer there.
The lesson you should have learned from today's blog is this: the presence of a head on a chicken is no indication of life. There may be a head and no life. There may be a life but no head. (And if you don't believe me look up "Mike the Headless Chicken" on the internet and you'll find out about a young rooster who lived for a year and a-half without his head before tragically choking to death in an Arizona motel.) And now I'm tired of talking about chickens so good night.
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