A Fun Thing I Did Today

     Buttermilk was on sale at the grocery store.
     I bought two quarts and poured them into a heavy earthenware platter to take down to the chicken yard.
    Thick, smooth, coddled liquid like scooped-up clouds that might have been gathered with ladles and plopped onto the shiny glazed pottery, the buttermilk glistened in the morning light as I carried the platter very carefully across the yard to the place where the chickens were converging, and dispersing, and speculating according to their private pecking order rituals.
    I heard them trilling and muttering under their breath like old women going about their morning chores, a chorus of contentment that increased in volume once they understood that my muck-boots were headed--not to the clothesline or worm pit or garden or fish pond, but--straight to them.
    "Bawk bawk!  buck-buck, buck-buck, buck-buck, buck-buck" they shouted with great anticipatory commotion.
     They jostled and knocked one another off to the sides in a wing-spanned rush to get to the gate before I opened it, so that I had to block the opening with my clunky boots to keep them from squeezing out the openings at the sides.  I almost tipped over the piece of pottery as I shut the gate with my elbow, and held the platter steady against my sternum so I could free up a hand to drop the latch into a locked position.
     The chickens now gathered in one great mass of feathers around my boots, and some of them were pecking the rubber where tiny dots of splattered mud must have looked as though they could be gnats.  Some of them looked up at me, their pairs of eyes meeting mine like those of my girlhood dolls--bright, close-set, tense, and so mysterious in their blankness that I could imagine they knew me, and cared about me as I did them.
     I don't know if chickens feel love.  Surely it would be an error to count on them as my sole source of love and affection in the world, but I don't see anything wrong with including them among the community of creatures, human and non-human, who fill my universe with a sense of belonging.  Besides, they know nothing of the ignominy of that part of my little life which is playing itself out in a one-sided polemic with the government, and therefore they can't be hiding doubts, or diverting accusatory looks, as I sometimes imagine my colleagues are doing.
     I edged my feet forward into the chicken coop, taking care not to step on chicken toes, to get to a place where I could lower the buttermilk to the ground.  Stooping down, with chickens massed around my legs, I set down the platter.
     All the chickens gathered round and began dipping their beaks into the plump, broad mess of it, raising their gazes to the sky, allowing the pearly smooth liquid to ease into their gullets, and dipping again.  Scooping and swallowing, the chickens seemed to be in a state of ecstasy.  They were no longer exercising their perpetual hierarchical powers, but instead were allowing one another--given this unforeseen abundance--to drink freely.
     Sometimes one or another of the chickens would waddle over to where I was leaning against a pole and watching them, and knocked its beak against my boots repeatedly, one side, then the other, in rapid succession.  I knew the bird must be cleaning wet feathers around its beak, nevertheless it felt to me like lots of small kisses were being delivered to me out of gratitude.
     My chickens have so little fear of me that they stood still as I petted their silky feathers--a gesture they will tolerate even though they can't possibly--as birds--enjoy it.  Today, I examined each one's comb--bright red and firm--and its feathers and feet.  No diseases, no cuts, no peck marks.  I checked their vaults through which, unbelievably, eggs pass every day.  I know the mechanics of chicken anatomy and physiology, but the fact that these lightweight, hyperactive creatures can make eggs out of grits, and dried peas, and--today--buttermilk, remains one of the great mysteries of life.
     When they had their fill, the chickens started a big conversation among themselves, and traveled in a troupe up and down the long, enclosed run, chattering in a way that sounded to me like songs.
     I went into the chicken house and found four perfect eggs.  Two were still slightly warm and had bits of shredded nesting paper adhering to their shells.  I set them down, outside, and pulled some new grass and a bunch of the tender leaves from bidens alba, a weed whose leaves taste like spinach.  I threw them into the coop and saw the chickens converge again, cackling, invigorated, inspecting the plants for bugs.
     Then I walked back to the house under a blue sky to scramble my breakfast.