Chickens Are Gross. Boys Are Too.

We went into the chicken business.

Not a real  chicken business.  We just wanted a few fresh eggs so we built a pen, bought some hens and hoped for the best.

The first set of fifteen chickens did well until they encountered a chicken hawk and two of them lost their heads–literally. One of the others was a victim of something akin to a Wal Mart massacre on Black Friday, and then there was the day we found nothing but feathers and the other one who drowned in the heavy rain. We were down to ten chickens within a few weeks.

Ten of them reached adulthood and should start laying, and earning their keep, any day. However, out of those ten “guaranteed” birds that are left we’ve discovered that two of them have been posing as hens and obviously are not. Their secret is out, the perverts.

Eight hens just will not support our family’s dozen-a-day egg habit and so we went and bought some more hens to replace the five dead ones and the two devious ones. They are younger so we keep them in a separate pen from the original flock because otherwise the bigger ones would peck the smallers til they died.

The other day I was caring for the back-up, teen-aged chickens and they. are. disgusting creatures. Chickens use their drinking water as an outhouse and then bathe in it. These birds haven’t been cute for a long time now.

So my eleven year old son was helping me and we needed to move the chickens completely out of their pen in order to clean it up, move it to fresh grass, etc. As I stood there deliberating (procrastinating?) on how I was going to do this without getting dirty (homesteader I am not), my boy just started grabbing up chickens as they squawked and tried to peck him. They flapped their wings in protest as he took it like a man. Wet chicken poo was going in every direction, including all over his face. He never seemed to be phased but just kept grabbing up those angry bitties til every last one was in the holding pen, and all the while I stood by gagging.

There are many times when I think how nice it would be if my four boys would sit and color nicely like their sisters. When the girls are found missing, we might breathe a sigh of relief and relish the silence for a moment. When the boys are missing–someone had better go find them.

Boys are always aggressive and love to fight. They are reckless, impulsive and dirty. True that in all of these areas self control must be learned, but these are actually virtues in a young man. Yep, I said virtues.

Do we want our boys to have the fortitude to go out and defend their country when they are men? Do we want them to have the courage and strength to roast grub worms on some remote island so to be granted permission to share the gospel with a tribe of pagans? How about pull bodies from a vehicle in an emergency? What would we do without little boys who grow into these kinds of men? The kind of little boys who don’t give a second thought to wrestling with wet chickens?

But you say he’s hyperactive? I prefer “energetic” God made him that way so that one day he would go out and conquer the world. At the very least we pray he will one day use that energy to provide for his family, minister in his church and be a pillar in his community.

About The Author

Bambi Moore has written 4 articles on this blog.

Bambi has been the blessed helpmeet to her husband for 17 years now, and together they are raising eight children for the glory of God.. Bambi spends her days managing a busy, happy home. She blogs about marriage, the nobility of motherhood and the ups, downs and grace-filled days of raising a large family, She prays her blog is used by the Lord to encourage women in their calling as wives and mothers. Visit In the Nursery of the Nation

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