Every day, when I head out to the coop at dawn to release “the girls” into their pen, our bossy, early-rising Plymouth Rock, Snow, is waiting for me at the window. Even before she can see me she's bouncing and squawking, protesting the fact — the outrageous fact! — that I’m late once again. Late, that is, from her point of view, which is all she cares about.
Not so today.
Silence reigned in the coop when I got out there at 6 a.m. Snow wasn’t muttering and grumbling, sharing her usual complaints with the world. In fact, she wasn’t even visible in the coop’s windows. In a rare win for yours truly, I had managed to haul myself out to the backyard before Snow got up! That pegged the score for the last 12 months at something like Chicken 364, Human 1.
As I poured water into a bowl and scattered a couple handfuls of feed in the pen, Snow finally roused herself. She watched, quietly, from the small window at the front of the coop as I placed the feed and water bowls in the pen. When I opened the door, Snow sauntered down the ramp without so much as a peep, followed moments later by Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, who always let Snow get up first.
No theatrics. No hysteria. No antics. This was a side of Snow — calm and well-behaved — that I rarely see.
My first thought was that she wasn’t fully awake yet, hence the civilized behavior. But then a more likely explanation occurred to me. Snow was chagrined. Embarrassed. Annoyed. Stunned into speechlessness. By arriving on the scene while she was still “in bed,” I had preempted her all-important, first-thing-in-the-morning ritual: the airing of grievances. That probably left her wondering if life was worth living. At least until snack time rolled around.
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