CHICKEN NEWS #7

March 12, 2005

The trash cans have arrived! They have appeared gradually over the last few days all along the quiet walkways of Muir Beach. Too heavy to lift even with wheels, they now line the narrow winding road, too big to fill, too awkward to move. They stand like giant building blocks of consumerism, reminding us that we buy too much, eat too much, use too much. My mother used to say “Enough is a beautiful word.” I thought about that often throughout my childhood years.

In the chicken coop there is just enough. Just enough chickens to eat my garbage and provide eggs for a few of us, just enough hens for the singular rooster I call Magic II. To my way of thinking, we all have too much, in the way of garbage cans . . even if each household actually uses and fills up all three cans, it appears to me we are using too much.

I am writing this partly as a memorial piece for my most favorite little hen I used to call “Too Too”. . . meaning she was just TOO adorable with her feathered ankles and rhythmic, startled steps as she came to greet me every morning . . . so beautiful as she approached on hesitant feet. Perhaps that's why she was taken by the God of Bobcats to chicken heaven! Too perfect to live long. . . again I must return to a my mother's statement “enough is a beautiful word”. . . perhaps it is better to be 'just enough' instead of Too Too much.

Perhaps that is why I don't understand the impetus to grow BIGGER: bigger trucks, bigger business, bigger airplanes, bigger prices, bigger missiles, bigger bombs. . . where are we going to put all these bigger things and events and gatherings and garbage cans???

Don't we have enough? Isn't there room in the world for one adorable, talented, unique, hesitant banty hen who approaches on hesitant feet and makes us laugh at her perfection?

Why do we haul away all our greens in giant bins lifted up by giant trucks? Didn't we used to move all our own greens to the chipper for mulch and compost? Well, these are not new thoughts, and have been considered greatly for the last 30 years by everyone, but really now . . . have we all forgotten that beautiful little book SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL? That was enough for me!

And by the way. . . I did not receive any of the giant trash bins. And it was lucky because I don't have anywhere to keep them. They are too big for Butterfly Lane, too big to stand beside my car, too big to put in my wood shed. Enough said!

Karla Andersdatter

Please send comments, opinions, or topics of interest to: <andersdatter@atthebutterflytree.com>