[author: Rick Jones]
It’s been a tough couple of months in the henhouse. My domesticated fowl friends and I are in a foul mood. (We’ll use “them” here, albeit I think I have a pretty good idea of how to distinguish the hims from the hers, but my bona fides among the progressive set need burnishing. Sidebar: I have no idea why.) There’s considerable anxiety about…well, pretty much everything. That anxiety really impacts productivity here in the coop and productivity is rather existential for us chickens, isn’t it? Long life for a chicken is rather dependent upon laying a lot of eggs.
Look at all this through our lens. Here’s what we’re anxiously clucking about.
All that incessant yapping, that argle-bargle, from the Big Dog means no one can get a moment’s rest. Are we supposed to pay attention to all that noise? Should we do what the Big Dog tells us? Should we do it right now? This minute! That’s hard, because he keeps changing his mind (it seems). One day, we are supposed to eat only organic (and is that RFK guy really a Kennedy?). Then, don’t worry about it. Don’t eat GMO! Eat GMO? Tell the little chicks that they can get by with only two stuffed people dolls? Take more dust baths or less? How do we keep up with all of this? Doing what he says today might get us on s DOJ list tomorrow. Of course, we’re chickens, so our options are limited. Even if we wanted to find bleach and Bitcoin what would we do with it? The Big Dog needs to do less pressers…I can’t keep up.
That stupid dog is also supposed to protect us from Mr. Wolf, right? Does he even know his own mind? Certainly, he’s not listening to us chickens and our issues. Someone saw him sniffing rumps the other day with that appalling wolf. That’s scary, isn’t it?
You know, there’s some jobs around the coop we don’t really enjoy. Us proud native-born domestic fowl shouldn’t have to do that stuff. For years now, those other chickens sneaking into the coop from “outside” were happy to do all those low-wage dirty and dangerous jobs. You’re not seriously suggesting that we do it ourselves, are you? To be clear, I only do meaningful jobs which are fulfilling and professionally satisfying, and I do them on my own schedule (and certainly not from the office). I proudly embrace work/life balance. That has to be respected here in the henhouse.
We used to have friends, allies as it were in chickendom in coops down the road. Now, they’re all mad at us. Chicken economics has become a zero-sum game, an “our coop first” sort of thing. I’m not sure that works. If it means the price of eggs goes up, that strikes me as a problem. If we can’t sell enough eggs, we start to look like dinner. I suspect we can’t re-skill to higher value jobs.
Perhaps we don’t have friends anymore because that Big Dog keeps barking at all the neighbors, when he’s not barking at us. Sometimes I think he likes the neighbors better (or at least the neighbors who are really good at Order and marching about in nice straight lines). Sure, I don’t trust some of them either, but I’m not looking for a fight. We’re chickens for heaven’s sake. There are no kick-ass chickens amongst us. We’re layers and cacklers. Maybe we used to fight for what’s ours, but we haven’t done that in a very long time (we were called dinosaurs then, actually).
And now there’s talk of a food shortage. Unacceptable! We’re not going to find our own food. Not our job. Moreover, the lack of hands will be a bit of an issue here. Also, we don’t have time to find our own food. We’re busy and emotionally fulfilled chickens. No one is going to miss their daily hot yoga class and actually go through the dull and monotonous business of scratching for grain. Our deal is we have traded security in exchange for abandoning freedom and agency. Zero tolerance for lack of safety and comfort is the deal! You say there’re reasons why you’re not getting the goods to us? You got excuses? You say that convention and precedent limit your ability to deliver? Phooey! If you can’t keep the trains running on time, you deserve defenestration. We will cheer it on and probably go looking for a new, less conventionally constrained and stronger big dog. All over weened, vainglorious applicants are encouraged to apply. We have now normalized the puissant big dog.
I’ve noticed that even when the feed is here, distribution is dodgy. Big Dog’s team isn’t getting it done. They don’t seem to understand their job is to serve us and make us happy. Indeed, they act like they’re entitled! Wrong! We’re entitled; they’re the help. I get the sense that they think we’re more of a nuisance and that working around the coop would be terrific except for us chickens. I was talking to my hen friends the other day. Them said the help ain’t breaking a sweat anymore. What do they think, this is employment for life? Are they DOGE-ing work? Someone should do something! We are entitled to be coddled and cosseted. That’s the social contract. We are the grandees of the feathered world. We are the coop of exceptionalism. We are entitled to deference and respect. I was talking to Farmer Bob the other day and it turns out that people known as voters apparently feel the same way these days. Good for them!
And while we’re talking about the help, I have noticed that this coop is getting rather shabby. Is anyone going to repair the roof? The place isn’t going to maintain itself. Are we supposed to sit here until it falls down around us? It’s not like we can pick up and go elsewhere. We really don’t fly well, you know. Aren’t these people who work for us supposed to keep the place up? I hear a lot of good infrastructure whoofing from the Big Dog, but what’s he got to show for it? If they’re not keeping the place up, what are they doing?
All of this strum und drang flowing from the sometimes befuddled and often dichotomous mutterings of the Big Dog is not terrific for the psychic happiness of our little flock. (I do remember the last big dog and remember wondering if he was all there. Are psychotic episodes and dissocial behavior distinguishing characteristics of all big dogs? That would be disheartening.) Half of us think the damn yapping dog is terrific, while the rest loathe him. Now, in a displacement theory sort of way, our love or loathing of the Big Dog has been transmogrified into love or loathing for each other. (I went to Chicken College and learned all that fancy stuff. In passing, let me take a minute to mention that my student loans are not chicken feed, but, of course, we only have to pretend to pay them back, right?). All this has turbo-ed tribalism. Each camp hates the other and are convinced they’re not just wrong, but probably venal, perhaps even evil. Are we getting to a point where peck my eyes is an acceptable part of social intercourse here in the coop? Even if you don’t have the balls (okay, we’re mostly all hens so we don’t have balls), to actually peck someone’s eyes out, just the constant repeating of this sort of inflammatory language is eroding the comity. All this makes clucking away and trying to lay eggs much harder than it should be.
And the cultural wars are still raging. I’m not really over the pulling down of the Foghorn Leghorn statue. On the other hand, I hear the Rhode Island Reds aren’t going to get preferential treatment anymore and micro-aggression seems to be so yesterday. A bad cluck won’t get you sent to Chicken HR hoosegow any longer. That’s good, but I’m not sure we’re making progress, having traded one form of identity politics for the other. The tribalism around Big Dog is outrageous. If we wore clothes, a silly idea, we’d be wearing MAGA hats or Bernie Bro tees and such sartorial shouting could indeed get your eyes pecked out.
So you see why we’re all distressed and all stressed out. Life is supposed to be good for us chickens. That’s our deal. We peck around, take dust baths, we get fed, someone picks up our eggs, we squawk at each other, and we lie in the sun. All this stress is just not right. The place is falling apart. The barnyard is getting dangerous. My friends are turning away from me and I clearly noticed that I wasn’t invited to several bougie chicken parties in the last couple of months. How are we supposed to be the best chickens we can be with all this going on? I fear our culture and our community might break down irretrievably. Some of us are starting to ask for a bigger, badder big dog. The jeremiads will surely follow, but to little effect, after all, we’re chickens. It’s enough to keep me up at night.
