I wanted something

It wasn’t something I couldn’t get otherwise, but I wanted something I could control more directly and I wanted to see if I could do it. I wanted to build my skill set.

I wanted eggs.

Raising chickens isn’t really hard if you have the luxury of a few extra bucks, some common sense, and some carpentry skills and tools don’t hurt either. I possessed these factors, so I thought I would try my luck. The fact that I wanted a closer connection to my food, and that I have little faith in the economy having long-term, stable viability were also factors in my decision.

In short: I started the chicken experiment because I could, and because it benefitted me: regardless of outcome. I’d have success (eggs)…or I would learn: either were acceptable outcomes for me.

In the end, and along the way, I learned more than I thought I would, not only about chickens…but about life…

In the end…Fear, panic, pain and terror (F.P.P.T).

That’s what my chickens experienced last night and like it or not, that’s how it’s going to end for all of us as well.

What was left of Vader when I went to see them this morning.

No matter how careful you are, or how many precautions you take…this is your ultimate future. You can avoid thinking about it, or pretend, or think “you’re different”, but these are going to be your last feelings you feel. God/Atheist… it ain’t gonna matter. You are going to spend your last conscious moments of your life in the darkest of the human emotions, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

Chickens might not be people, but I would bet that these are the exact things the chickens felt as the fox (or other predator) made it’s way into their coop last night while they slept. When it leapt at them. When they were suddenly awakened on their roost, where they peacefully were sleeping. The initial surprise must have been terrifying. The teeth ripping their various parts and clamping down; pain, shock and panic likely weren’t too far behind.

Although most reading this will likely not be killed by a fox or other predator, the fear, panic, pain and terror humans feel on the subject of death is no less real or palpable. I am sure of this because I have seen more than my fair share of death: human and otherwise. I have presided over enough human death to feel confident in this position. I’ve held folks hands when they took their last breath. Rich and poor…it’s always the same. There is no escape. You are going to be scared, in pain, terrified and panicked. The best you can hope for is understanding, and then acceptance…but the terror is still there. I have a personal goal of having so much acceptance that I laugh at death when it comes…but I likely won’t be able to get back to you in regard to how that plan works out. I’m thinking I might fall short.

*Side note - At one point in my life, I worked in a meat packing house, where my job was to shoot cows in the head with a device specifically used to end life. Several hundred a day for eight years…you can do the math. Fine, docile, “happy” creatures one minute: the next, writhing on the floor, blood leaking out of a small hole in their skull, as the fragments of their skull acted like projectiles of death: effectively short-circuiting the system, and causing involuntary muscle stimulation in death that I always found less than dignified.

So after seeing so much death, pain and suffering in this life, a thinking person would have to ask themself, “what would be better?” and “is this the best we got?”

The three original girls enjoying the spring of their lives, from left to right: Red, Vader and Cinnamon.

Cosmic Cruelty…the unjust constant.

So, let’s say all that above is true. Let’s say that it’s terrifying and painful and the last moments of all creatures are spent in pain and fear: what does that say about the system? Whether your system has a creator or not…what kind of system ends all living things with their worst possible emotions? If we are all made of the stardust of the Big Bang…surely our ultimate end would be something equally elegant and beautiful…right?

I often chuckle when folks call nature “beautiful” and bask in the balance of it all. When they go on and on about how humans need to get “back to nature”. I often wonder if they ever consider the perspective of the rabbit being eaten alive by a hawk? Do these people consider the horror of being eaten alive, as they craft their position about the beauty and fairness of nature as they pontificate at dinner parties? Do they ever put themselves in the place of the prey when they marvel about the system of predators that eat them? Do these folks consider how many animals slowly starve to death and how that would feel? Is it easy to consider those facts as they eat hors-’derves ?

Because frankly, most of these folks I know who do this…are prey.

And the animal kingdom topics not even getting into the other natural world topics like:

The fact that your gut biome is a battle ground between evil germs and your antibodies that fight for your survival each minute of your life.
Or the fact that entire galaxies are eaten by the gravity of black holes. Is that nature “amazing” and “fair”? Perhaps it is, but it certainly isn’t something these empathic humans can even begin to comprehend as they wax poetic about the beauty of nature.

So, if you get a chance to play god, and you enter into an arrangement with those in your charge: you are going to make it as fair as possible for all. That is to say, in so far as they honor their obligation to provide you with the product you need, you will return their safe maintenance and upkeep. Surely a caring “god” could protect those subjects from the unspeakable horrors mentioned above…right?

The first day after birth, they are still shaped like eggs.

I can do better...and I must.

So you raise them, and you nurture them from babies. You put the heat light on them on the cold days. You build them bigger and better accommodations. You feed them the best foods, and make that food plentiful and wholesome. You make sure they are safe from the harshness of the world. You provide the safety and comforts that are the embodiment of the responsibilities you accepted when you entered into this partnership. A partnership, in which you provide all the love and care that is needed in exchange for the products you want later as repayment of your investment.

It’s a pretty militant and utilitarian form of love, but it’s trust and commitment…and if that’s not love…I don’t know what is.

And then the R.O.I . happens…and you are proud.

Growing larger quickly. Raising chickens is like an accelerated form of parenting.

Time passes…

You work hard for about six months for egg-laying chickens before you see any returns. It seems like a long time of cleaning cages and feeding those hungry critters, with no real return on your investment. But at some point in the process, you don’t really care about the return anymore. You have a routine, and you kinda like it. You get up, check on the chickens, do what needs to be done, and then get on with your business. The chickens can be kinda cute when they are young, and they definitely all develop their own personalities: some good…some not. But you like them anyway, because you know what they are. You saw them as eggs. At far as they know, you are their creator and steward. When you enter the room they all immediately look up at you as if to say, “What wonderful thing will you do next for us, kind and magnanimous overlord?”

You start to look forward to seeing them. The fact that you are their everything (and yet you know that your intentions aren’t completely pure) is a little disturbing, but a lot intoxicating.

A person who is less than a god could be enticed.

And they grow, and then the eggs come, and you did it. You kept them safe and you grew them, and you made them healthy and beautiful and strong. You cleaned their cage, and even that gross chore had the side benefits of fertilizing your grass and your garden. It’s been a rewarding partnership, with all parties living up to their end of the bargain. I did it. I truly am skilled. Look at me go!

You continue to keep them safe and strong. Along the way, stuff can happen. In the first winter, Cinnamon looked a little under the weather one day, and the next she was dead and frozen in her coop. Her sisters looking on at her carcass. There was that Cosmic Cruelty again. The systems shortcoming always making themselves so obvious to me. The unfairness of it all, so blatant…and I could do better…I was sure of it.

Chickens have about 600 eggs in them in a lifetime. That alone is close to a miracle in my book, but that’s the facts. So, if they lay one every day for two years, minus the six months of no eggs as they matured…you can count on about two full years of egg production. And that’s what I got. And that was good. but I have to be honest, in the back of my mind was always the question:

“…and then what?”

Now I’m a bit attached to these chickens. I know them, and they know me. We are fond of each other. Their “usefulness” has ended. I got what I wanted. The egg production is going to go nowhere but down from here. Soon they will be a dead expense of time and money…and they can live for a long time. Add to this fact the matter of no new birds can be added at this point to the coop. The phrase “pecking order” comes from what happens when you introduce new birds to an existing flock. The older birds will peck and abuse the younger. There is that Cosmic Brutality kicking in again. One chicken pecks another to death. Great system. No wonder it’s been so easy for me to be better than god to this point in my fellowship of chickens.

However, the linear pattern of my plan is becoming bothersome. I have created a system with a clear line of duties and responsibilities. Of rewards for meeting obligations. But it’s a straight line, and one that fails to make sense the further you go out the line, as it yields no future or growth.

And then you look at those in your charge…and you see it.

The ladies in winter months coming into their own. Cinnamon would sadly not make it through this winter.

Sure, I did my duty:

I kept them safe.
I kept them fed.
I kept them watered and healthy.

And they lived all their days in the wired world I created for them. A 6’ x 15’ “safe place” with wire on all sides. They were safe, but they were beautiful prisoners. Was this what it meant to have a “better system”? Is this what I want my god to do for me? Is a cell created by my protector, preferable to the opportunity to experience the world IN IT’S ENTIRETY…PERIL AND ALL?

I know that for me, that answer was “no” and I set out to make it better. I still had a shot at redemption of my miscalculation, and I still could be righteous if I could make their last years free and happy ones. Days of wandering and scratching and river water and endless bug hunts. Days with full sun warming their feathers. I can still be the god I aspire to be! I can still have a better system!

And then you give them freedom….and it’s good.

I’m not going to lie: I liked setting them free. It made me feel good to see them wandering around. If it’s possible…they looked happy. They greeted me each day with even more exuberance than in the past. Red would always genuflect and let me pet her feathers and pick her up and caress her. Vader was a bit more stand-offish, but still had her own way of distant worship. It was all acceptable in exchange for food and shelter and we had a lovely arrangement of food for adoration.

To give them freedom, I ordered an electric chicken door that would open and close using a light sensor. Open all day, and closed at night. It worked OK for a while, but then the wall warped a bit, and it works less well. Plus, it was obvious that the birds much preferred using the full sized door to come and go. They didn’t like the little ramp and having to duck into the coop. What were they…animals? At this point, they had grown accustomed to a certain level of dignity and decorum. To slink into a hole in the wall frankly seemed uncivilized and a bit beneath them.

I began to not really care about the little safety door. Everyone was happy and living their best lives. And again, if I’m honest, the door not working and leaving the big door open might actually solve the bigger problem I was having resolving the linear pattern of my new and improved god system. I got less concerned and diligent about closing and locking the big door at night. Perhaps this makes me a terrible god? A mean god? A neglectful god? Or does it make me a practical god?

And then the marauders come…because they must.

I didn’t personally do it…but I kinda did.

It was too good to last. Everyone was fat and happy. Not a care in the world. Everything was taking care of itself. No need for me to worry about closing the coop door…everything was fine. The chickens were having the time of their lives. Neighbors were enjoying their visits and putting food out for them. It was the best of times for being a chicken…until it wasn’t.

Whatever ate them was ruthless. Cosmic cruelty with extreme prejudice. Both are completely gone and the coop is now empty. Just needs a good cleaning, and you might never know they even existed.

Now that it’s over, I can sit back and take some time to craft my position for my next dinner party. I can eat some deviled eggs (the last the girls will be providing me) and see if I still think nature is fair, and that humans need to “get back to it”? I can question my premises and see if I still feel the same as I did before the god chicken experiment began?

Conclusions:

As sad and “unfair” as it seems, I now see some advantages of Cosmic Cruelty over my “better god plan”. Here are a few:

My plan likely had one chicken dying before the other, and that would have been heartbreaking. Your only friend of your entire life, dying leaving only you to soldier on alone. That’s a scenario that we will never have to endure now. The cosmic cruelty spared us that sadness.
The assassin has cleared the way to a future. A future that did not, and could not exist under my previous “new and improved god plan”.
The Cosmic Cruelty did my dirty work for me. Now, I can live blamelessly on, being able to truthfully say that I did my best and gave them a nearly perfect chicken life (all the time secretly knowing that my plan would have ended horribly, had not the more gruesome plan intervened).

My new position for the next dinner party:

I now dispute my original premise. All of my actions as “chicken god” had a foundation in fear, panic, pain and terror (F.P.P.T.) are things to be avoided. I had determined that these were “bad” things, because they scare me personally. I have now decided that these are things to be welcomed. They are the signals of sustained life. Of a cyclical solution: vs. a dead end “kind” plan that is unsustainable.
F.P.P.T. and Cosmic Cruelty is compassion at it’s most pure.
I’ve come to more fully welcome “historic arsonists” in my history teachings, as not so much villains, but more possibly folks who understood the hazards of not burning it all down from time to time. Might they have been folks who had tried their better, more compassionate plans…only to reach the same conclusions I have reached? Might they too have seen the larger conclusions by practicing their own microcosm of life? Might they have had their own intra-life, more simple example, much like the lessons the chickens taught me?

Regardless of all that, the deck has been cleared. It remains to be seen if I will get chickens again. But if I do, I am pretty sure it will be with more appreciative eyes of what we already have around us, and for the vengeful god/unfair system that has been at work here for all of known history. Because if you don’t have anything better, perhaps just he happy for what you have.

Playing God, Chickens & Philosophy