You know the Hatchery. It's the only one you know, from Dirty Jobs.

I've been raising chickens for something like twenty-five years now. I've had my ups and downs, predators for the most part. There's been times when my chicken run has had electrified fencing all the way around it, and the dogs, coyotes, feral cats, what have you, have defeated my defenses. Chicken wire for the coop is not good enough. The Neighbors' dogs ripped it out with their teeth. I put slats of wood over the wire to keep the dogs out, an inch apart and two inches thick, looking like a castle with parapets. The run is covered by aviary netting, strands of colored string criss-cross the run to keep hawks from slamming into the netting as they dive on plump meals. At twenty-five years old, it look's like an aging Stalag.

Three years ago a band of raccoons wiped me out. They killed every single one of my hens, didn't even bother eating them. Just ripped them up and left them scattered around the run. I tell you, it was devastating.

So for a year I had no chickens, and the whole family remembered why we'd kept them.

There is nothing better than a fresh home-grown egg. They are creamier, tastier, fresher than any egg you've ever eaten. Once you've tasted one of my chickens' eggs, you will never be satisfied with any other.

Then there's the crowing of a rooster, the clucking of the hens, the cackling of a hen when she lays an egg. Yeah, its a hoot, its soothing, its the sound of Home, other than the two boys arguing passionately over whose dirty socks are on the coffee table.

So last year, I ordered a new batch. I got the usual suspects: Five Black Australorps, that put out a lot of brown eggs, five Pearl Leghorns, that are ugly, mean-spirited and skinny, but pump out white eggs like a factory, five Americaunas, gentle, oddly but beautifully colored, that lay green eggs, five Rhode Island Reds, and five Light Brahmas, what the Wife has dubbed 'Mukluks', because, besides being huge gentle animals, have feathers on their legs.

The last two are known as 'multi-purpose' birds. That is, when they're done laying eggs, they enter the 'chicken noodle soup' stage of their lives. In twenty-five years, I've never had the opportunity to test this claim. The Wife, the children, the predators have never allowed a chicken to fulfill its ultimate destiny, the reason it lives, other than laying eggs. Still, I am prepared. Youtube and Hobby Farms have shown me the way. Getting the lungs out in one piece seems to be the major challenge.

But I'm off the subject. Though the chickens arrived healthy and hardy, it wasn't a good year for chickens.

First there was Seymour.

The Hatchery, you know its name, sends an extra 'mystery chicken', an 'exotic'. You're thinking, 'well that's cool, an extra chicken', but see, the demand for chickens is overwhelmingly hens, roosters not being egg layers and without castration, major surgery on fowl, not very good for eating. (That's the only chicken I've been allowed to 'cull', and I can attest that what little meat there is, is tough and stringy.) Half of the chicks born to the Hatchery are roosters, so the Hatchery finds itself with thousand of new-born chicks that they have to destroy because nobody wants them. This must be a sore point, because what the Hatchery does with at least some of its roosters is toss an exotic 'mystery chick' in with every order. It doesn't save them all, but it must assuage the guilt the Hatchery suffers. All of us loyal customers of the Hatchery then end up with an exotic rooster.

We opened the box, the Twins bouncing off the walls with excitement, and before I can finish my count, what catches the eyes of all, but a black 'brainiac' chick.

It was smaller than the others, didn't seem to be doing well, but most striking of all, it's head bulged up into a ball. It looked like Frankenstein's Bride. It was a Polish.

The Polish breed of chicken has a crested plume of feathers on their heads. The ladies sport nothing less than a bubble hat that sits down over their eyes, guaranteeing they can't see anything around them. They are sweet, gentle, not very good at laying eggs, and very exotic. What they are famous for is striking a noble pose, which probably comes from them not being able to see anything, except maybe the ground. They look like royals at a dress ball. These are not the practical creatures I usually buy.

The Daughter promptly named the Polish Seymour, and renamed the entire breed 'Poofy Heads'.

Seymour was sickly from day one.

I have now read from several sources that Polish's are a timid lot. They won't fight others for food, they won't shove their way to the water, and in fact often are shoved aside without resisting. Their size and gentleness tends to put them at the bottom of the pecking order.

This batch would not have a good record. Though they arrived in fantastic shape, within six months more than half of them would be dead.

Perhaps I should describe the process of how the Hatchery ships day old chicks from Webster City Iowa to Southern California. The chicks are hatched on Friday, always Friday. The Hatchery knows exactly when because they've been doing it for ninety-seven years and they know. The chicks are sexed and sorted. They pack the chickens into cardboard boxes, filling out the orders accordingly, and by Saturday they hand the thousands of boxes over to the United States Postal Service.

The USPS is the only parcel entity that will handle live poultry. FedEx and UPS don't do it, and even if they did, it would cost more. The live chicks, barely a day old, are shipped overnight to the local central postal office across our great land. The chicks are there at the central office by Sunday.

It used to be, before the turn of the century, that early Monday morning, three or four AM, we would receive a call from the El Cajon post office on North Second Street, with a din of cheeping in the background forcing the postal worker to raise his voice to be heard.

“Hey there, this is the United States Post Office. You're chickens are here! Come get them – Please?”

Yes, there was always that slight suggestion of terror in the Post Man's voice.

I would drive down, having taken the day off for the event, and walk up to the door, knock on it as directed, and have a box shoved at me with a look of pure panic on the post man's face. You see, I'm not the only one getting chickens. You could look back into the post office and see a stack of boxes, the pile practically quivering with the volume of cheeps emanating from within.

Nowadays, we get a call from the Central Post Facility downtown, on Sunday, and you are offered the option of driving down and picking them up there.

“Now you can wait until Monday, if you like,” the guy with the Boston accent says with a practiced chortle, “but you and I both know, you get 'em home now, and they're gonna be in much better shape.”

And they are. The Monday morning chickens always looked exhausted, and I never failed to lose at least some of the chicks. The Sunday chickens give you that furious gaze of defiance as you clutch them and dunk their little heads into the drinking water trough. You have to do this, because chickens are too stupid to realize they need to drink water. This is literally the first time they've even had the chance to drink water. So I drive down to the central office, sort of downtown if you don't live in the Big City, follow the directions given by the Head Honcho, violating all sorts of signs saying 'keep out' and 'postal vehicles only', and pick up a box of baby chicks, a stack of boxes, ten times larger than the one I used to spy on Mondays, behind the curiously calm and casual postal workers of Sunday.

Besides the Sunday Morning call, there's been one other major amendment in the chick delivery over the years. Before, the box had a little excelsior to keep the chicks warm, but for two days, they would have gone without food or water, living off the 'food sacks' that make up their tummies, which in a sunny-side up is the yellow sun. Now The Hatchery dumps a red gelatinous mass called Gro-Gel Plus. It's brilliant. Colored red to attract the dim-witted hatch-ling to peck at it, the Jell-O-like substance contains water and a pile of nutrients that gives the chicks a boost for the long, sometimes grueling trip to their new homes. Ever since this invention, it's rare to open the box and find a lifeless form underneath the feet of its former box-mates.

But Seymour wasn't doing well, and the Daughter instantaneously bonded with the needy creature. This had happened before. The First Batch's Exotic had been picked on by the others, and the Young Wife had adopted her, naming her Abigail. This was before we realized that all 'mystery chicks' were roosters. For months Abigail sat on Wife's shoulder, and they schmoozed. Then it started crowing, and he became 'Abe'. Abe would grow to be a mean-spirited spoiled creature that ruled his dynasty with merciless cruelty.

Seymour, though, died. In the care of the Daughter. In her room. In her hands.

Daughter was traumatized.

Within eight months, I was traumatized. The raccoons had returned. I won't go into gross description of what I found that morning. I had already shot one of them. Larger than most house cats, I hit it square in the chest with a .22 Short. I think the noise startled it more than the twenty-nine grains of lead in its chest. It gave me a dirty look and sauntered off before I could reload and aim.

The crew of bandits had crawled up the walk to the chicken coop, opened the latch, hauled out chickens, one by one, and tore them to pieces. Again, killing more for sport than food. Half of my chickens died this way, leaving me the responsibility of twelve survivors.

At night, chickens don't move. Ever want to catch a chicken? Find out where it's settled at dusk, and come back in the dark. It's nearly frozen to the spot. They would have sat there, powerlessly protesting as one by one they were dragged out and slaughtered.

The simple gate, maybe a foot wide and a foot tall, latched as it had been, had failed me. I replaced the latch with not one, but two ring latches at each bottom end of the drop-down door, and when the gate tweaked a bit, I made that apart of my system. You can't open the left end until you open the right. I put padlocks through the rings, both sides, so the bandits couldn't pry the gate open from either edge, and I keep the keys on the outside of the run, on a nail just at the entrance. I won't underestimate raccoons again, although I do count on them being nocturnal murderers.

For weeks after that modification, I would come down to loose the chickens for the day, and find paw marks, eerily human in shape, smeared across the dew-covered sides of the chicken coop. The raccoons would sit on the roof and lean over, trying to open the setting boxes' hatch. I considered latching that as well, but its far off the ground, far from the roof, is six feet long, and is very heavy. In any case, after several months, the night-time prowlers ceased their haunting.

The Daughter was still talking about Seymour, the Polish chicken, Poofy Head. What kind do you think he was, Daddy? A Silver Lace more than likely. He would have been beautiful.

She had been to the Hatchery's website, knew the names of the different breeds. She and I then plotted to order another batch of chickens.

I'm not one to give up, even when it might be viewed as the nobler thing to do. I had to prove to myself that I could be a good steward of chickens. I had to double-down, though. I needed more chickens to prove my poultry worthiness.

Despite it being her Christmas present from me, the Daughter insisted on chipping in for them. Our cover story was that the Daughter wanted to 'show' them.

Two arenas of Chickendom that I have never had an urge to explore are 'cock fighting', where some have found another use for roosters, and “Showing'. Go to your FFA and County fair sites, and you can see the 'showing' of otherwise useful farm and domesticated creatures. I wanted more laying chickens, The Daughter wanted Poofy Heads. We made up our list.

There are nine different breeds of Crested Chickens offered by the Hatchery. I'm sure there are more. (There are some breeds that the Hatchery does not offer. The Wellborn, for instance, that lays a terracotta red egg.) Five of those Crested breeds are Polish.

I wanted to replace some of my Black Australorops. I was down to one, and they lay such a lovely brown egg, but I also decided I wanted some I'd never tried before. Orpingtons, one of the breeds the Black Australorps were spun off from, are famous for setting, something none of my usual breeds do. I have only had three hens set long enough to hatch eggs, and every single time it has ended in tragedy, the chicks dying before they reached maturity. But if I had hens that really sat down and tried, I might be inspired to figure out how to avoid those disasters.

Red Star is a breed that's a hybrid, don't ask me of what, that the Hatchery offers as a really productive brown egg layer.

Our list:

White Polish females 3

Golden Polish females 3

Buff Laced Polish females 3

Buff Orpington females 4

Black Australorp females 4

Silver Laced Polish females 3

Red Star females 5

I can't recall why we decided not to get any White Crested Black Polish, the fifth breed of Polishes, but twelve hens geared for nothing but looking cute was a bit much. We also decided not to get a rooster. The male we have now is a Rescue Rooster that my feed store (Double S Tack and Feed) had taken in and was offering for adoption. He's huge, he's ruthless, and he would not tolerate another rooster in his run, and Polish's are smaller, gentle and wouldn't last a day. Besides, the Polish hens look better. The Polish roosters look like Cossacks with their feathery hats, while the mature hens have a true feather bubble on their heads.

This brought on another issue. County law says you can't have more than twenty-five chickens, including roosters, without proper zoning, and even maybe permits for a commercial operation. I still had twelve chickens left over from last year's batch, not including the rooster. Add twenty-five hens to that, and you're up to thirty-seven, more than I've ever had, and more than I want. I just assumed I'd figure something out. With ugly commentary from the Wife, we ordered the chickens.

I have done this many times, but I still seem to have to re-learn the procedure. On the other hand, having only ordered a batch the year before, and the Twins' excitement, especially The Daughter, but also the Spare Son, I was prepared.

I have in the past taken a round plastic patio table, and put an old children's toy, a large plastic ring, maybe two feet across, with a slide, steps and holes for infants and toddlers to crawl through, and used this combination to house the chicks in. I put the big round play ring on top of the table, duct-tape the crawl holes and slide and steps up with cardboard, and just like that, instant chick nursery.

But last year I found that the growing chicks soon ran out of room in that two-foot across space, and I probably put them out too soon because of it. This time, I took the table, left the toddler toy down in the coop, the chickens like to roost on it, and instead, wrapped the edge of the table with chicken wire, and hung empty split-open chicken feed bags over the wire, tucking the bags between the wire and the table. Ultimately I ran a piece of baling wire around the outside to keep the bags pinned against the wire, making it less likely that persons passing by would rub against the bags. This all went on the patio. I ran an electrical cord to it, and hung a heat lamp from the rafters. Then I wrapped an old car cover, also hung from the rafters, so that the whole operation was now sealed. Heat would be retained, and drafts would not exist. You just drew the car cover aside, and the whole of the brooder was exposed.

With the chicken wire about eighteen inches from the top of the table, there was little chance that the little ones could get out, and with a three-feet across ring for them to romp in, I felt they could hold out there for quite some time. This was all done a week ahead of time, giving me a chance to fine-tune the brooder for maximum ease of use and maintenance. I even had a chance to wash and clean the whole operation in chlorine, cleaning and sterilizing the feeders and waterers.

March tenth was the delivery day, and for whatever reason, the chickens came in way late. Normally I hear from the post office in the morning. The batch before last had been on Easter, at nine am. This time they called at three in the afternoon. The Twins decided to go with me to greet the new arrivals.

The smiling station master walked the box out to us, wished us luck, and it took every ounce of parental patience to keep the kids from opening the box right there and then, and start passing them around. This happened last year as well, and I fear that the handling of them might have done last year's batch harm.

Not a dead or even sickly chick was among them. Think about that; fragile new-born birds sorted, packed and shipped in a simple cardboard box, loaded in Iowa on rumbling trucks, and maybe loaded then on planes or even overnight trains, unloaded, reloaded who knows how many times, over a three thousand mile trek in a single day, to Southern California, and not one of those fragile little things died.

I didn't get a chance to dunk chick heads in water, the Twins were all over it. They knew exactly what to do, once I had made up the Quick Chick mix, basically powdered Gatorade, with a little extra sugar for a boost. Though I had specifically stated I did not want an exotic chick, I counted twenty-six chicks. There appeared to be an extra Black Australorp.

The Polish stood out like Chickens from Mars, poofy little Brainiac heads of fluff. They were the only ones, besides maybe the Black Australorps, that you could identify, and I suspect, if there had been any less of them, they would have been stampeded away from the water and food by the much more aggressive and bigger chicks.

The Hatchery's directions are clear and precise, and the closer you hold to them, the better. Keep the brooder between 95 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the first week. The heat lamp should be a red one, or else the chicks can peck at each other, doing harm. Try to avoid corners, chicks pile up and can suffocate each other. Rounding everything is better. Each week you drop the temperature by five degrees, for about five weeks. Mind you, you have to rig the inside of the brooder so that the chicks can get closer to or completely away from the heat lamp, regulating their own temperature. I've learned to shade the waterers and even the feeders, as they tend to absorb the heat, and I just can't picture any creature's thirst being quenched with warm water. You want to encourage the hatchlings to eat, drink and frolic.

Okay, frolicking probably isn't one of the things chickens need to do, but if they're eating enough and drinking enough, aren't too hot or aren't too cold, they're running around, goosing each other, flapping their wings, chirping like crazy, but in a contended way, and you can tell, that's frolicking. If they're frolicking, everything else is right.

One of my co-workers mentioned that her mother keeps chickens, and I revealed I needed to find a home for some of my chicks. Soon the plan was laid. My co-worker would bring her nine-year-old daughter over, and her daughter would select some chickens for the grand-mom. First it was four chickens, then it was five, and then it was six. I figured this was good. Grand-mom has been keeping chickens since the Old Country. I'd be sending my charges to a good experienced home. The family is Vietnamese, and Grand Mom knows how to 'cull' a chicken when it's time, and I hoped I might be able to get invited over to see someone with experience perform the ghastly deed.

Daughter and Mom arrived on a Saturday. My big fear was that they'd clean me out of egg layers, and I'd be stuck with twelve Pose Striking chickens. Co-worker had agreed to pay us five dollars per chick, and for each Polish chosen, my daughter would get the money.

 By the time we got down to the fifth one, I had to insist the co-worker's daughter pick something other than a Poofy-head. She wasn't just going for the Polishes, but the light-colored ones. I was worried that we'd be cleaned out of either the white or buff Polishes. Finally Mini Memi chose a Black Australorp.

So my co-worker's daughter left with five Polishes, three of them white, and one serious egg-layer. I figured Grand-mom would be coming for me with a pitchfork. My daughter had twenty-five dollars, and a hole in her heart. The seven remaining Polishes became truly precious.

The chicks grew with such robustness, they were protesting the extra-sized brooder by the time we got to the point where we could turn off the heat lamp, roughly five weeks. I chose a Friday afternoon to move the flock down to the coop where my remaining chickens from the year before lived.

By Saturday afternoon, I had to admit it wasn’t working. The older chicks corralled the chicks in one corner, and if the chicks tried to get to the water and the feeders, the older chickens didn't actually attack them, but they stepped in the way, and that was enough for the still small pullets. I had to move them back up to the house.

A Black Australorp got out, and it got dead. The children came up with many excuses, but I know one of the cats or dogs did in the chick. In the past, the dogs haven't so much killed chickens as they've worried them to death. Chase something long enough, or catch one and keep it pinned down for a time, the chicken is going to die. Star Fire, one of the dogs, used to dig underneath the fence and did nothing more than chase the chickens around the run. And chickens died. An electric fence solved that habit, and digging chicken wire deeper into the dirt.

The pullets, hens younger than a year, had to stay in the back yard and patio until they were big enough to compete in the chicken run. Poultry politics.

I set up a temporary chicken wire pen at one corner of the patio out onto the lawn, and every morning before going to work, I took the pullets from the brooder and placed them inside the pen. I then told the kids that they had to, for the sake of the chickens, guarantee that the dogs and cats, but especially the dogs, did not knock over the rickety fence and chase chickens. The kids are home schooled, so they're there all day, and they took this mission to heart. They didn't keep the dogs away from the fence, but they jumped down their throats if the pooches touched the fence, or touched a hen.

Something impressive happened. The dogs stopped trying to chase the chickens, or tear down the temporary fence. In fact, when a chicken escaped the pen, the dogs herded the hen against the fence, guaranteeing some eagle-eyed hawk didn't score an easy plump lunch.

By this time, the chicks were truly pullets, plump, active, although not really big yet. We could sort out their breed as well. My fears of all of our White or Buff Polish being carried off by a nine-year-old Cong Berserker was proven unfounded. We had two Golden Polish, two Silver-Laced Polish, two White Polish and one Buff. The lot of them, starting with the fearless Red Stars, had now completed defeated my transitory pen and spent more time outside it than in. The dogs circled them all day long, the cats drooling at a distance. I especially liked the Silver Laced Polish. They were lean, with their future crested plume looking more like a Mohawk at this age, and they stretched themselves out as they ran, which they did a lot, Nitro the Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, sniffing after them. They looked so much like Road Runners that if I could tell them apart I would name one RoadRunner and the other Acme.

The light-colored Polishes reinforced the stereo-typed Bubble-Headed Blonds. Attach a video of these ladies whenever you post a Dumb Blond joke. Only the Gold Laced Polishes, their gorgeous gold-on-black feathering looking like royal robes, seemed to be spending any time practicing noble stances at this young age. Our very healthy chicks/pullets ran loose across the back yard and patio, eating drinking and frolicking.

Thing is, chicken poop is smelly, no fun stepping in, and attracts flies. Twenty-five itty-bitty little chicks produce an itty-bitty amount of poop. Nineteen healthy, eating-their-way-through-a-hundred-pounds worth-of Start and Grow'-chick-feed poultry are going to produce an awful lot of 'nitrogen rich' reeking-after-ammonia poop.

Down in the run and coop, I keep a bucket of ash, either from the fireplace or the barbeque, and I occasionally shake ash over the run, over the nesting boxes and in the 'dust bowls' that the chickens take dirt baths in. Besides the fine ash smothering chicken mites, it also is, for the most part, potash, which is mostly potassium. This ash mixture 'fixes' and absorbs the nitrogen in the chicken manure before it evaporates off as ammonia, and when I scrape it up, I can throw it in the garden and you've got two of the three major nutrients plants need to grow. It also absorbs the stink, which is evaporating ammonia, after all.

Couldn't do that on the patio, though. Once again, it became necessary to take the chickens, two weeks older, down to the chicken run.

The Red Stars, Black Australorps and Buff Orpingtons were quite a bit bigger now, but the Polishes looked all that much smaller in comparison. I delivered the new flock, once again, on a Friday afternoon, and watched them over the weekend, but was determined to leave them down in the run for a week.

The larger pullets started getting along with the older hens. When I went down in the afternoon to lock the coop up, I generally had to round up the Polishes from about the run where they were preparing to spend the night. I would walk them around to the setting boxes and put them down inside there. It took that first week to get all the pullets to work themselves into the coop and find a place there for the night, and even after that week, the Polishes would crowd around at the entrance, not finding a spot on the roost. This is probably the ultimate demonstration of the pecking order, even denied a spot on the roosts. Oh, the indignity of it.

And then I took note of the single Buff Laced Polish.

She hid in corners of the coop during the day, and I found her another time at night, regressing to a location in the run. It was the third time I found her hiding in a corner that I took a good look at her, and realized she had cuts on her toes.

She could have cut them a dozen different ways, but once cut, the other birds will take notice, and almost habitually peck at the wound. They do this to any injured flock member. Under these circumstances she may never get to food or water, and the wounds will never heal. So I knew I had to pull her out and take her back up to the house. She was, after all, our only Buff of the Polish Persuasion.

The Wife was not ecstatic. She wanted her patio back. Yet one pullet isn't nearly as bad as nineteen. Just a night, maybe two days.

And the Daughter bonded. Another needy Polish, wanting for care. Someone needed to make sure Cocoa drank the water with chicken penicillin in it, put Neosporin on Cocoa's cut toes. Cocoa sat in the Daughter's lap and was pet like a cat and cooed like a Turtle Dove.

Did I mention the Buff Polish now had a name? The daughter named her Cocoa.

Cocoa ate it up. Cocoa followed The Daughter around like a puppy. Cocoa started coming up to the sliding glass door to the house and, when closed, tapped at it, when opened, sauntered right in, looking all the more like a dumb blond, albeit dirty blond. She spent the evening on the Daughter's lap. In the house. A chicken inside the house. The concessions the Wife had made were astounding.

All this in one day.

The Wife was not amused. She'd lost her patio, she wasn't going to lose her house. I was much more worried about the carpeting. That very night, one of the old Black Australorps hatched two eggs. That's right, I get some new chicks, and just like that, a breed of hen not known for setting had indeed gone broody, sat on eggs for a grueling twenty-one days, the gestation period for chicken eggs, and I get down to the chicken run after work to find a flustered black hen trying to corral two perfectly blond, hours-old chicks.

I quickly rounded up the chicks and mom and got them into a large pet carrier. One of the ways I have lost hatched chicks in the past is that they get through the fencing and are never seen again. Big Mamma, which is what the kids named the mother hen, pecked me every chick of the way. I carried the pet carrier up to the house, further earning the animus of the Wife. Now I turned around and set about making a place for them in the run.

I actually have two 'coops'. The original is more of a shed with roosting spots and nest boxes. There's room in there for feed containers and the many tools of chickendom. It is not geared for security, however, and so I built the second coop that I've talked about. The original nesting box is just a box of plywood sticking out from the wall, still underneath the roof of the shed, with a hinged lid that allowed us to reach down and scoop the eggs up. Chickens, however, don't like nesting on the ground and instantly switched over to the new coop's raised nesting beds. After losing a hatched chick through the large gaps in the chain link side of run, I got the idea that I could fence off this three foot by one-foot area and put mom and chicks in there. This I proceeded to do with some one-inch aviary wire. Though there was a slight gap at the top of the wire and the top of the nesting box, I couldn't imagine anything being able to get in through the rough-cut wire.

When I returned to the house to retrieve Big Mamma and chicks, The Wife informed me that she had been in the kitchen making dinner, turned around to find Coca at her feet, who looked up at her and with that Dumb Blond look on its beak, pooped on the kitchen floor.

Cocoa must go.

So instead of the baby chicks and Big Mamma being ensconced into this new enclosure, I found myself easing a protesting Buff Polish down through the lid.

I swear, when she hit the floor, she struck a stance and jerked her head around as if to say, 'What? Hey! Where's The Daughter?'

'Just for the night," I told Cocoa. "We'll be down here tomorrow morning and we'll have you back up to the house again. We'll figure something out."

To the hysterical cheeping of a Buff Polish pullet, first angry, then pleading, I returned to the house. She had water, food, and a secure location

The next morning I went down and loosed the flock from the coop and fed them. I had nearly forgotten Cocoa, but remembered to open the lid to check on her food and water, and to reassure her that things were going to be all right.

No Cocoa. It took me a second to realize it, because it made no sense. I put the lid down, lifted it again.

Still no Cocoa.

There was that slight gap between the top of the wire and the top of the box. If somehow Cocoa had slipped through that, she would have ended up on the inside of the old coop, and thus inside of the run. I went inside the run and searched it thoroughly. No Cocoa.

Now I was in a sweat. What if something got inside the nesting box and dragged Cocoa off? I inspected the wire, because anything big enough to get to Cocoa would have had to twist the aviary wire up. Nothing suggested the wire had been bent or warped. There also were no feathers. When a killer gets to a chicken, there's feathers everywhere. Feathers don't get eaten.. No feathers though, not one. Not in the box, not on the wire, not outside. If something had gotten to her in the box, there would have been feathers lost in the struggle.

Still, no Cocoa.

Guilt set in. I'd served Cocoa up, locking her in a holding box, like a Christian waiting to see what horrors the Coliseum had imagined to make their deaths grisly entertainment. I was not comforted with the knowledge that chickens can't remember ten seconds ago.

I searched everywhere around the coop, around the garden. Empty-handed, I returned to the house.

I made a point to avoid the Daughter. She found me.

"Daddy, I went down to the chickens. Where's Cocoa?"

"I don't know," I looked away. "She wasn't there this morning."

I was grilled for the scant details I possessed.

Now I was cooked. See, I've lost so many chickens in so many awful ways, I really wasn't anxious to go looking. I always find the remains, and with Cocoa, the sense of failure, of betrayal, would be ten-fold.

The children went looking. They found nothing. I looked over the fence in the creek bed. Sometimes the predators will grab the bird and haul it there. Too many dogs and the like in our fenced yard that might interrupt their meal. There was nothing, which could mean no more than that the feral cat had carried it further away than usual.

The day dragged on, and there was no relief. No body, no Cocoa. The Wife came in from hanging laundry.

"I could swear I hear that chicken."

It's bad when the Wife weighs in. First off, in our neighborhood, it sounds most of the day like you're in one of the aviaries at the San Diego Zoo. You've got screaming hawks, crowing roosters, not just ours, Blue Jays, crows, heck, I don't know all their names, but add in rice rockets screaming up the hill, its not quiet, and now the Wife can tell some noise as specifically the cooing of one particular pullet? Yeah, that's bad.

But I had a flock of other chickens to worry about, a spring garden to tend, two new chicks and a hen called Big Mamma to set up in the coop. In the back of my mind I'd gotten three of each to cover loss like this, but first Seymor, now Cocoa. I was a lousy father, my Christmas gift a nightmare.

The wife brought in the laundry.

"I'm telling you, I keeping thinking I'm hearing that damn chicken."

"Where?" I asked. My thought was she was channeling Cocoa from the Great Beyond.

"I can't tell."

I called it, the Great Beyond.

"I'm going to go looking for her." The tension in the Daughter's voice jerked at my heart. Where had we not searched? We have an acre of land, half of it fenced. Cocoa wasn't in the run, she wasn't in the garden. There simply wasn't anywhere left to look.

I needed to start some corn seeds.

I sat down on the patio and sorted out containers that I intended to fill with worm casting, soak in water, and then bury corn seeds. Its one of those things you do in the afternoon when it might be too hot to wander out into the garden. I had been about my project for about half an hour when there was a great commotion. The Spare Son, the Eldest, the Daughter, The Wife, the dogs, all were squealing and crying out. The cats were running for cover as the procession appeared from the back of the yard. The Daughter led the way, cradling what appeared to be a Bubble-Headed Blonde.

"She found Cocoa," the Wife drawled.

The Prodigal Polish had returned.

I stood up, leaned forward. Cocoa jerked its head around, reinforcing Dumb Blond stereotypes even as the Daughter squealed with joy.

"She was stuck in the lemon tree!"

The lemon tree was here when we moved in, and has been on its last legs most of that time. Its branches touch the ground, and Disney Iceplant climbs all over it. We've never counted on it for lemons, with another lemon tree out front. The best we could determine was that Cocoa had started into this labyrinth of dead limbs and vines of succulent, and at some point wedged herself into it all. She was unable to back out. The Daughter had found Cocoa when, as she searched, she heard the plaintive twirls pullets have for a cluck.

The lemon tree is right under the clothes line.

Kill the fatted calf, find a ring for Cocoa's claw, toe -- foot. That which was lost had now been found. I can't tell you what a weight was lifted from my soul.

Cocoa could do no wrong. The Daughter sat in front of the television, newspaper on her lap, and hand fed the Prodigal Polish while watching television.

The impetus of this is that Cocoa has broken the Poultry Glass Ceiling, which she can't see, of course, being a Polish. Soon there will be a backyard chicken coop. Not the ugly aging Stalag chicken run, down the hill in the Back Forty, but a painted insular, modular unit, four sides, stand-alone. It will be of the tractor style, where there are wheels at one end to facilitate moving it around. This will give the chickens different ground to peck at and poop on. In time, I will build toys and roosts for each of the Chosen Polish, so that they may too enjoy the benefits of being Royalty, spoiled rotten. I've been told that this is to be a father/daughter bonding moment, which is better than having my toes painted again.

Cocoa will always be the Princess of the Flock. Though I personally think the Gold Laced Polish are the prettiest, we are down to but one Buff. She also will be the recipient of royal vestments suitable for her status.

It's called a Hen Holster, trademark and patent pending, combination harness and diaper. That's right. Though she couldn't care less, no longer will she be limited by her lack of defecation control. She will be able to prance about her domain in either a 'wrap-around' or bikini style device that allows the chicken to poop into a washable reusable bag, while at the same time have a place to latch a leash to the critter for walking around. It comes in a myriad of pattern choices from Red Bandana, Basic Black, and Leopard Print. The only thing that's holding up the purchase is Cocoa's size. She's not full-grown and there are three sizes. And at thirty bucks a pop, we're getting one, just one, and she's not growing out of it.

At present, she sits upon her throne, a roost that any Cockatoo would be proud to call home, that I threw together with dowels from the old swing set that finally collapsed and for the most part got burned in the fireplace this winter. At two feet tall, it sits at just the right height that Kellian can be seated at her computer and hold pieces of watermelon for Cocoa to stab at with her delicate beak and palate.

How she escaped the nesting box, let alone the run, is an unknown, a Great Mystery that needs no answer, since all ended well. And I'm not a Bad Father, I'm not. Ask the Daughter, ask Cocoa.

Such is the life of the Prodigal Polish.