Introducing Smithers!

(In case you’ve missed the pattern in the chicken-naming protocols around here, Landlady’s a Simpsons fan. I mostly go for old movies.)

Anyway. Smithers.

A fine figure of a cock chicken, isn’t he? Or he would be if he were ever to achieve maturity, which alas is unlikely. He was supposed to be a hen. He was assumed to be a hen, right up to the moment when he started crowing. And that’s when the whole lot he was in got moved from the ‘burbs to the Gulch, because Landlady’s HOA doesn’t mind backyard chickens but it draws the line at crowing roosters.

Fortunately for the others in the upcoming generation, it appears Smithers here is the only recipient of the toxic and deadly Y chromosome. Any feminists among the readership will be gratified to know that, among Gulch chickens, the crime of Y chromosome possession is punishable by a trip to the pressure cooker.

So anyway, Smithers has been moved to the Fortress of Attitude because Landlady didn’t feel like feeding a useless eater. He’s never going to lay an egg or fatten up to make a decent roast. Also, James Dean…

…The one permitted cock in the flock, was beginning to take umbrage at his existence. So, sooner or later I’ll relieve him of it. It seems a little harsh, but in Smithers’ case life is only nature’s way of telling you your meat is still fresh.

By the way, I have to give kudos to James Dean. He has learned that attacking Uncle Joel buys you nothing but a painful and humiliating punt across the chicken house, and he doesn’t do it anymore. Or not very often.

UNLESS I show up with a dog carrier and stuff a protesting member of his flock into it. Then he will invariably attack me. And since that’s pretty much the closest thing to a job he has, good on him for it.