Chickens. The WideEyedSpouse won’t let me have any. We have the space for a microflock and someone has to eat all of those extra worms in the worm bin. Which, if you recall, was also forbidden by the Spouse. He believes he has some power over the goings on of the WideEyedHousehold. Funny.

Chickens were in my life three ways today.

The Caribbean chicken spends most days with me. I carried that one from his home rolled in a tube. I took the Caribbean chicken to a frame shop here in Buffalo and I’m pretty sure that when we unrolled the canvas, sunshine and cheer glowed out at us. The framer laughed, couldn’t help herself. Sometimes I worry that I brought only one Caribbean chicken home. There were a dozen or more – we were left in the back room of a little gallery to flip through the canvases and pick which chicken would be moving to Buffalo with us. Do the others miss our little red chicken? Have they moved to homes in Paris, Kansas, Toronto, Heidelberg?

The next chicken in my life today simultaneously was glorious and wretched. Chicken 2, yeah we’ll call it Chicken 2, was a well-picked over carcass reeking of Myron Mixon’s smoked chicken rub. Except that that happy delicious reek which originated in our backyard smoker was overlain by the stink of rotting meat. And visually, I can’t even begin to explain the nightmare of the appearance of Chicken 2. See, Chicken 2 currently resides in the flesh eating dermestid beetle colony in the lab at the university. We’ve taken to roasting whole chickens around here so that I have food for the little beetle guys when our road kill supply runs low. They ate the Canada Goose and we haven’t skinned the raccoon yet, so bony little carcass Chicken 2 is squatting in the tank under a shroud of moving black beetle carapaces. Looking at it is mesmerizing, like watching the tide but less comfortable than that. You can really feel them creeping around on your own person, a gift that keeps giving for hours of psychological twitches. So that was Chicken 2.

Probably the last chicken in my day, Chicken 3, arrived just before dinner. I sort of hope this is the last chicken of the day, because otherwise we are moving into weird territory. Chicken 3 is printed on a chair in the Anthropologie catalog. I instantly wanted it. If I can’t HAVE chickens, I should be able to SIT AMONG chickens, right? This makes perfect sense to me and perhaps you can understand why the WideEyedSpouse’s life is made complicated sometimes. Chicken 3 is going to haunt me and there’s a good chance that when I have the new yard sale settee recovered, it’s getting chickens.

Yeah, chickens.