Living the Dream

It was sold as a 3-bedroom double-wide manufactured home, but let’s face it, we were living in a trailer. The walls were paper thin and there was never a moment when I didn’t know which room D was in. We could practically hear each other breathing from any room in the house. One night we were awakened by a critter chewing on something in the ceiling above our heads. Its snack kept slipping and rolling away, and the animal chased after it, all night long. The first time I turned on the heater, I heard whistling under my feet and discovered that the carpet had been tacked down right over a heater vent. Why bother to cut out those pesky rectangles when the heat will blow right through the carpet, anyway?

So I did what came naturally under the circumstances. I bought some baby chicks and set them up in a box in the family room. They were messy and stinky but oh, so cute. Every morning they’d greet me with hungry peeps, and every night they fell asleep huddled together in a corner. 

At four weeks old, they were big enough to move outside into the coop. But I didn’t realize that they were still small enough to squeeze through the holes in the chicken wire. All those feathers were deceiving. A few days later I noticed a chick on the ground outside the coop, not moving. I looked around and saw two more chicks lying in the driveway. And then I spotted two scrub jays inside the coop, eating from the chicken feeder. As I approached, the jays slipped through the wire and flew away. 

Jays are territorial gangsters. From what I could gather, they had entered the coop and chased the chicks out, then pecked them to death so they could have the food all to themselves. It was a gruesome scene. But shortly thereafter, West Nile Virus reared its head and nearly wiped out all the jays in the neighborhood. Karma? You be the judge.