The Wet Chicken Incident

Perhaps surprisingly, this is not a euphemism.

          Back in the first decade of the new millennium, in a far away magical land called California, I eked out a modest existence in the Bay Area in part by ranch-sitting for friends. One particular couple I knew were Charles and Kim, who I met when I needed a winter pasture for my horse, and a friend connected us. They were both living the textbook CA dream. He was a little older than I, had already made millions in something tech-related, and had invested wisely enough that he maintained his wealth through the stock crises. She was/is both gorgeous and one of the nicest people I knew, with a million dollar smile and looks that made for 50/50 odds that she was once an exotic dancer or a very high end working girl (neither of which are professions to which I object), and had gracefully held onto her beauty in middle age.

          After they'd gotten married, Kim decided to fulfill her dream of having a ranch and raising Gypsy Vanner horses, so they bought a beautiful swath of hilltop land in the East Bay and proceeded to populate it with horses, dogs and about a million chickens. Okay, maybe there were more like 50 chickens (I counted 48 and 53 at different times), but anyone who's ever been around them knows that you count chickens as: One, Two, Three, Several and millions. She had Silkies, Barred Plymouth Rocks, New Hampshire Reds, some small ones that looked more like doves, Red Jungle Fowls, a few Bantam breeds, something gigantic and black, and one of whatever the fuck is on the Corn Flakes box. One of the dove-like ones was awesome. Her name was Abigail, and she was a lap-chicken. She'd sit on Kim's lap when she worked at the computer, and whenever I was looking after the ranch, Abigail preferred to ride around in the pocket of my sweatshirt as I did chores.
          By and large, though, chickens are hands-down the dumbest life forms (as a group) I've ever encountered, the Silkies being the worst offenders. Go to a drag queen cabaret and locate the most voluminous marabou boa in the place and wad it up into a ball. Glue a beak on in the most logical place, then jam the whole lot onto a pair of ruffled pantaloons and you'll have your very own Silkie.
Think I'm joking? Look, here's a picture:

 

          Now imagine this creation with a perpetual look of confused paranoia, occasionally running around in a histrionic, directionless frenzy. Add ten more of them and stand in the middle of the whole mess. Welcome to being me.

          Now, I've had my own ducks. I had Khaki Campbells and Pekins, and not only are ducks the most affable of fowl and a consistent source of hilarity, their eggs also make the best popovers ever. 
(Here's me with one of my Pekins. I think this one's "Billie Idol." That's right... I had my duck in my house. Don't you judge me!)

          When it comes to chickens, however, I've found that while chickens in general are kind of cool, I have one problem: Roosters. Or, as I prefer to call them, "Homicidal, Ambulatory Lunch Meat." Kim had a bunch of them, and I spent many an hour being seriously terrorized by a triumvirate of bantams (one copper, one black and one white with black speckles) who would surround and mock me as often as possible, and one godawful monstrosity of a rooster named, "Clancy." Clancy would follow me like a shadow as I fed the horses and dogs, cleaned the pasture, filled the waters, cleaned the coops, collected eggs and filled the chicken feed dispensers. 95% of the time he'd just stare at me with one eye. Oh, he had two eyes, but he could only terrorize me with one at a time, first glaring at me with one and then quickly turning his little pin head to fix the other on me. The other 5% of the time he would actively attack me with the venomous hatred of a ninja bent on avenging the slaughter of his family. The damage that a pound or two of angry bird could inflict on me was truly astounding; I went home with scratches and frequent bruises more often than not, and he went to bed in the coop some nights with wispy strands of my hair still tangled in his talons.

          The horses on the ranch consisted, at one time, of a Gypsy Vanner mother and foal  (they look like this, but they're only large-pony height):

an adolescent Clydesdale, a massive draft horse of unknown breed and mercurial temperament, and another friend's yearling draft-Thoroughbred cross named Ruby. Ruby, having been afflicted at an early age with the equine version of a sense of humor, had the annoying habit of climbing into the big (about 7 feet in diameter and 3+ feet deep) water bin in the pasture. She'd just hang out there, belly-deep in the water, with a look on her face like, "Well, waddaya gonna do abouddit?" The answer, of course is, "nothing." Sometimes we could shoo her out, but for the most part the safest thing to do is to let a large, young horse get out of the water trough when she's good and ready. Well, at least until we got the fence in the other paddock finished and we could move her to where the troughs were too small for her to get into.

          Chickens, it turns out, aren't as flexible with the whole water thing as one would think, especially not in winter. I found this out one morning, when I discovered one of the Silkies in some distress, it having flapped up onto, and subsequently flopped into one of the water bins, the sides of which were too steep for her to grab onto and get herself out. I'd found her just in time, and when I rescued her she was exactly what you's expect a cold, wet wad of marabou to look like, compounded by her being coated in green algae.
           There was only one thing I could do, since I couldn't leave her in the coop with the others on a cold night if she wasn't totally dry (they're not the best at dealing with cold). I had to bring her in the house and give her a bath.

          I was a little at sea,  since I had to use SOME soap to get the goop off of her, yet I didn't know if this would be bad for her feathers in the long run. In the end I used a very diluted smidgen of baby shampoo, which did the trick. As I toweled her off, the blow dryer caught my eye. To my surprise, it turns out it IS possible to blow-dry a chicken. Here's an animal that freaks out when a leaf blows by, yet sits quietly on a towel, happily dozing as I fluff up her feathers on low heat.
          As I embarked on this task, I had one of those moments where I slipped into a contemplative assessment of how life in general was going. Who am I? I mused. Well, I'm a graduate of an upscale private school, I have two college degrees (one from one a prestigious art school), I've lived in NYC for a long time, worked in the Marvel Comics Bullpen, partied many a night away in the depths of the East Village, spent time working for the largest ad agency in the world, skated drunk in a mylar mini-dress at the Rockefeller Center rink, been lots of places I had no business being, also lived in both Paris and San Francisco, actually spent a night in a Paris brothel (that's another story), and had a ton of other experiences in my 40-ish years that fall into the, "Huh, that's kinda weird" category. I marveled that all of that had eventually led me to this point, here, in my friend's bathroom, blow-drying a slightly green (but happy) chicken back into roughly the size and shape of a basketball.

          It's moments like that that give one a fantastic perspective on life.