Releasing our hens from their coop first thing in the morning is my job, as is putting them to bed at night. My wife Liz gives them snacks during the day when she’s home, but the early-morning routine has been my responsibility ever since we started keeping chickens back in 2012.
Of course, Liz always wants a progress report when I return to the house after I feed Snow, Nellie and Hope at dawn. For years, she greeted me with the same question as soon as I entered the kitchen, day after day after day.
“How are the girls?”
Lately, though, for no obvious reason, she’s come up with a new way of posing the same query.
“How are things in Henlandia?”
Henlandia? Yesterday, I requested some clarification. What does the name Henlandia suggest? It sounds so grandiose. Does it imply that the henhouse is a state unto itself, à la Pennsylvania? Or a country whose name pays homage to Finland and Albania? Or perhaps even a continent? (Antarctica?) Liz gave me the condescending look I have come to recognize as an indication that I have asked a foolish question, or made an idiotic statement.
Of course, Liz always wants a progress report when I return to the house after I feed Snow, Nellie and Hope at dawn. For years, she greeted me with the same question as soon as I entered the kitchen, day after day after day.
“How are the girls?”
Lately, though, for no obvious reason, she’s come up with a new way of posing the same query.
“How are things in Henlandia?”
Henlandia? Yesterday, I requested some clarification. What does the name Henlandia suggest? It sounds so grandiose. Does it imply that the henhouse is a state unto itself, à la Pennsylvania? Or a country whose name pays homage to Finland and Albania? Or perhaps even a continent? (Antarctica?) Liz gave me the condescending look I have come to recognize as an indication that I have asked a foolish question, or made an idiotic statement.
"Henlandia," she said with great patience, as if explaining the obvious to an addled soul, "is a village."
For some reason, the notion that “the girls” live in their own ostentatiously named hamlet strikes both of us as quite comical. Obviously, we’re easily amused.
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