Healthy vegetables.
My mother used to drone on and on and on and on when I was a kid about how vegetables were good for you. And I could see her point when it came to carrots, onions, and peas. But honestly, cabbage? Really?
No disrespect to my mother, but the way she used to cook cabbage, I was convinced she had to be wrong. Years later, I discovered though, as with all things, the trick with vegetables, is how you approach them.
Here at Tweddley Manor, we currently have a lot of chickens. We have 11 in our old established coop, Cluckywood, and another 4 we adopted and hatched in the smaller, yet somehow fancier, Cluckingham Palace. As chickens’ lives go, they have it pretty well sorted. They potter about set areas of the backyard looking for bugs and luxuriating in dust baths during the day, and then snuggle up cosy and raccoon safe in the coop at night.
There, most commonality ends because they each have very, very different personalities:
Genghis, our rooster, would fight to the death with a hawk, or take the eyes out of any creature threatening his ladies. And yet, this fearsome fighting machine gets terribly forlorn if I don’t see him for a couple of days to tell him that he’s a good boy and hand-feed him cooked rice or spaghetti.
Nuggets is our oldest chicken, clocking in at 5 years. She’s bold and combative, insistent on having the biggest portion of food, and on being at the centre of things. She's the coop bully and also the chicken that's most often broody. Though her animal instincts may tell her she yearns to hatch an egg, in reality, any poor wee creature that would hatch from a shell in her vicinity would be decimated.
Daphne is a dreamer and enjoys sleeping alfresco. She sleeps on the roof of the exclusion coop inside the main coop rather than on a roost like all the other chickens because in the evenings, channeling her inner Greta Garbo, she wants to be alone.
Margo likes to complain. She complains if she’s waiting to lay an egg. She complains when laying an egg. She complains after laying an egg, and she complains if anyone else around her is laying an egg which, when there’s a lot of chickens around, is pretty frequently.
I could go on.
The point is that each of our pecking, feathered, cluck-meisters is markedly different from the other. But they all need the same thing: food, shelter, access to water, something that makes the day interesting, and the feeling that they somehow belong.
As with all living creatures, sometimes things can get kind of rocky. Lately, Mark got the feeling they were a little bored. Or maybe that was just his excuse. Because he decided the one thing he absolutely had to do was buy the chickens a cabbage.
You see, the internet is useful for many things, like how to diagnose illnesses, or how to research philosophy, how to book a vacation, or how to drive yourself mental with rage bait from news organizations. But it is apparently also a font of knowledge as to what you might want to do if you get the idea your chickens are finding life a little humdrum.
And one of those suggestions was to buy a cabbage and suspend it from a string in the coop, so that it hangs like a punch bag and the chickens can peck at it.
So that’s what he did. He spent 79 cents on a cabbage, hung it in Cluckywood, and waited to see what would happen.
Admittedly, initially it didn’t go well: Margo complained - what else would you expect? Daphne ignored it, and Genghis eyed it suspiciously. Nuggets, however, unleashed her rage on it, only to discover the law of motion which is ; when you peck a suspended cabbage so hard it swings out, it’s only going to swing back with the same force and smack you on the beak.
(And that right there is a philosophy for life. Take that, Plato.)
But after a while, Senga, who is quietly curious, and Shelley, who used to be as bolshy as Nuggets before Nuggets outranked her, placed themselves either side of the cabbage and thus physics allowed them to both take turns at nibbling on some green without getting a cabbage to the beak.
Before long, the others joined in, and it was the chicken equivalent of swingball. And the only thing that might be better than being an actual chicken playing cabbage swingball, has to be watching a group of actual chickens playing cabbage swingball. It is utterly brilliant.
Animals are magic. They really are. They share the same planet as we do, and pretty much have the same needs as we do, but they’re more honest and less absurd. I freely admit, in the past when life has been tricky, I’ve gauged the severity of my situation by asking myself if everything was so dire that I wouldn't be in the least amused by the vision of a penguin contentedly wearing a hat. So far, nothing has tipped the balance.
Anyway, when I sat down to write the note this week, I realized that we are solidly in June, and I couldn't believe how fast this year has passed. Although when I say that, it's been fast and it's been slow. The months pass quickly, but the sword of Damocles that is the current poisonous political climate feels like it’s taking forever to clear.
But clear it will one day. Eventually. With plenty of moments to ask myself the penguin in a hat question, I'm sure.
So I concluded that I ought to have something terribly impressive to write about but when it came to it, all I could really think about was the chickens with the cabbage. Because you see, fear, rage, and sorrow are infectious, but honestly, so is joy.
And though it's totally not probably very PC, I have to confess there's nothing quite as funny as seeing a super aggressive chicken take out her rage on a cabbage, only for the cabbage to then take its revenge.
I did consider stating that the Nuggets/ cabbage exchange was the perfect metaphor for the Trump/ Musk fallout, but of course that's not true, because I do actually like Nuggets and cabbage.
It’s funny because years ago, when I was a kid, my mother used to drone on and on about how vegetables were good for you, and no disrespect to my mother, but the way she used to cook cabbage, I was certain she had to be wrong. Turns out she was completely and utterly right. The trick with vegetables, as with all things, is really just a matter of perspective.
xo
PS: Every time you click on the wee heart emoji on this post to like it, a chicken discovers a cabbage. That’s a complete and total lie - chickens can’t be controlled that way - but if you click ‘like’ on this post, it doesn’t half perk up my algorithm.
P. P. S: If you enjoy talking/listening/stories/ random facts, come and join me and Mr Tweddle this Thursday at Fish and Bear. First time is free, gratis, and a gift from us so you can try it out. After that, it’s $10. xo
And because I am totally showing off - look, I have a book for sale. Written when I had two fully functioning arms - though no better grasp of punctuation.
Volume 2 is available now: US, UK, Can, Aus
Audiobook link https://amzn.to/3Dh0MVP
If you do buy a copy, please leave a review on the site as it helps people know that I write in proper sentences… erm sometimes xo
My Dad always said that eating your carrots was good for your eyes. His follow up was, "have you ever seen a rabbit with glasses?"
Your mum made the best cauliflower cheese I have ever had!