Do you know what a chicken catcher is? I didn’t until last
Saturday and now I’m the proud owner of my very own poultry catcher leg hook
and, no, I don’t have any chickens to go with it. It’s a 4 1/2 foot long pole
with a rubber handle at one end and a hook at the other, a fancy model compared
to some I’ve since seen online. My niece and her husband live in a county south
of me and they drove up to present me with my new prize. I’m pretty sure he
made it, judging by the wood burnt label on the smooth wood because it matches
the work on the walking canes that he makes and sells. They don’t keep chickens
anymore but at one point in time they used to have a dozen chickens---each a
different, fancy breed that laid various colors and sizes of eggs. But at least
three of my brother’s grandchildren keep chickens. Chicken talk in the family amuses the heck out of me but we have the best deviled eggs and
potato salads at parties. They didn’t grow up on farms but they are prime examples of a growing phenomenon of backyard and urban chicken hobbyists in their
generation. There are five magazine publications on the market now devoted to raising
backyard chickens!
So what am I going to do with my new tool? Hope I’ll never,
ever have a need to use it but if I experience another power outage, the
chicken catcher hook is the perfect tool to pull the manual override cord on my
garage door. It’s such a simple concept and a solid solution for those of us with
bad bones who don’t get on ladders. I got curious about how the tool works
for the purpose it was invented and all the videos I found online are so quick
you can’t really see what’s happening. But this description from UIUC Poultry
Farms explains it: “What this tool does is it catches a chicken by its leg and
because their legs bend forward (and not backwards like ours) their leg gets
stuck. From there, I lifted it up and grabbed it by both of its legs. I was
then told that the proper way to hold a chicken is by splitting my fingers into
a live-long-and-prosper sign, then sliding that along the chicken's stomach.
This allowed me to hold both of the chicken's feet as well as support its
entire weight in my hand.” The guy who wrote that was learning how to catch and
band chickens but I assume other people catch chickens to cook for dinner. That was one of my husband’s job as a kid growing up on a farm. I can’t even
buy and prepare whole chickens from the grocery store without them remaining me
of a living creature and that turns me off to eating them. I can’t imagine
killing dinner with my bare hands.
My niece is a grannie-nanny to her a four-and-a-half year
old and a newborn. She, her husband and their daughter are all teachers---two
of them retired, of course, but once a teacher always a teacher. They genuinely
enjoy interacting with young people and I’ve come to believe that it’s also an
art form that if I ever had it, I’ve lost it along the way to sprouting gray
hair on my head. When I try to make conversation with little ones or pre-teens I feel like
a sea lion preforming for a fish they never deliver. I didn't had that trouble relating
to my nieces and nephew when they were growing up. Heck, I was still half kid
myself. I was only twelve when the first one came into the family.
Playing in my nieces and nephew’s fort in the woods, swimming, boating and fishing
at the family cottage, snowmobiling, raking leaves, sleep-overs, planting
gardens, walking country roads and me bugging them with my camera are some of
my best memories. My brother thought I was spoiled because I wasn’t in the
kitchen doing ‘women’s work’ before and after meals. Instead I was in
charge of entertaining the kids. But who was I to question the wisdom of my mom
who wanted us out from underfoot when serious meal preparation and clean up was
under way? My mom and dad set great examples for how loving grandparents should
interact with their grandkids and I like to think I set a good example for how
aunts interact. However, I’m the official godmother to my oldest niece---and
maybe my other niece, too, I can’t remember---I fell down on that job. Do godparents take that of roll of spiritual guide seriously? If so, I'm not dead yet. There's still time for that conversation. I'd probably quote something cryptic like Echart Tolle's, "You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself." Ya, I know what you're thinking. What was my brother and sister-in-law thinking when they picked me to be a godmother?
My niece and her husband and I had a wonderful, long
visit. They helped me track down a problem I was having with my hot water
return line since last week when all my pipes were drained during the power outage, then we
went out for brunch and came back here to look through old photos.
And, of course, I had a show-and-tell with the stuff I’ve bought for my
upcoming bedroom redecorating project. Show-and-tells have always been one of my favorite activities and when you think about it, the blog world is full of writers and readers who also love them. ©
