a ~ And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells;

Sawdust restaurants with oyster shells? That’s our chicken coop.

I should say M’s chicken coop. We each have our hobbies; I have books, horses and this blog, and M has books, horses, and chickens.

Our chickens live better than most people. M built them a coop nobody would be reluctant to call their own and the twenty girls have nested it into a real home. They have their tiered roosts, their snug boxes, their bucket of warm water every morning and every night. They have their overflowing feeder and oyster shells sprinkled among the pellets. Oyster shells make their egg shells strong and manageable. You are what you eat.

When M was building the coop the joke we heard over and over was this: “Run an electrical cord out there and you might never see him again!” We’d laugh along. We are great at laughing at ourselves. Sometimes we laugh at ourselves just for fun.

Our chickens would make good hosts except for the fact they don’t know how to use a toilet.

When M mentioned last week he was thinking of getting more chickens, I made a noncommittal noise. A few days later, he mentioned it again. This time I told him maybe not. Let’s wait. Our fridge is full of eggs, our stoop is full of poop. Hobbies have a limit.

~a