What is up with all these chickens?

New Orleans is known as the land of ten thousand chickens. 

The feral birds form gangs, roving the mean streets of the 504, while their domesticated cousins chill-ax in their coops, or peck up the free food, flung around the yard by their Peeps.  What they hold in common, is that they represent the underlying rural temperament 

of our bustling metropolis.  Come now, let us MEAT some of our EGG-CELLENT feathered friends!

Nyssa, who is renovating a sweet old shotgun in the new marigny, has invited a few feathered friends to take up residence at her urban homestead.

                                                                 Country girl!

        

                                                                       Olde fashion bake chicken!

While discussing the Uniquely New Orleans "bohemian vibe" that lets chickens feel "free to be you and me", I noticed a tear, welling up in Nyssa's eye.
I could see my reflexion in it's convex surface, and it was the face of a man, his brow deeply furrowed with concern. "Nyssa, I can sense that your heart is heavy, unburden your self, my child".

And Nyssa related a tale of Miami.

Apparently Miami has a robust population of feral chickens as well, and the misguided citizens have a major BEEF with them. Death squads prowl the side streets and back alleys, killing with impunity. It's not very fair, and needless to say, there is a lot of CRYING FOUL.   (it's really like this in Miami)

Nyssa's a jeweler, check it -n- see!    http://www.etsy.com/shop/hourglassproductions

Tony's chicken halfway house, for the rehabilitation of wayward birds.

Sometimes you have to look past the bravado and menacing strut of the chickens that hang on the streets of the 9th ward.  It's also Important to understand that living on the street was never a choice, as they were orphaned by a motorcycle accident. Many of them would make the change if given half a chance,  and become pillars of society. Tony and his wife Natalie give them that half a chance, with a group-coop, structured living, instruction in life skills, and lots of love.  If you would like to foster, or adopt one of these good hearted birds, don't hesitate to contact him.

Tony isn't just about chickens either.    http://www.genericartsolutions.com/Site/HFZsign.html

Myrtle and Nina live in a darling little two story cottage hidden behind the main house up front. In between, is the chicken coop, and a handsome flock. It's a secret garden of poultry.

                                                              Chickens do the darnedest things.

Anyway, it's pretty straight forwardly awesome, and there's not a lot more I can say about it. It's just...sometimes the charm of a woman and her bird is best captured in pictures.

                                                                 Voila!
                                                                     

Then Myrtle slipped something off-the-cuff about a goat.  GOAT?! I don't see any goats? Pow! She opens the back door to her kitchen. (I hadn't realized there was a back door) And suddenly I'm in GOAT-LAND!

It was so 'through the looking glass!" I was freaking!  It was all "The lion, the witch, and the kitchen door!  The chronicles of goat! Pacmans tunnel, Quantum physics, E=MC2" It blew my concepts wide open, and I learned a valuable lesson.  If I am ever near something that is relatively mundane, and opaque, I should never pass judgement on it, because it may be covering up some goats.

Check Myrtle's art!   http://www.flickr.com/photos/passarola/

                                                              Goat-land!

                                                              

                                                                
                                                                Goats are worthless before their coffee!
                                                                Also, goats say stuff like, hmmm I think I'll have cafe ole!
                                                                 Tsssssssssssssssst!

Someone's in the kitchen with Nina,
someone's in the kitchen I know!
Someone's in the kitchen with Niiiiiiii-Naaaaaaa!
Strummin'  on the old banjo!
(She's really in the kitchen with a goat)

Nina's goat link!     http://alchemicalagriculture.blogspot.com/

Then, about my chicken experiances during my formative years.

So the whole time growing up in upstate NY, we had lots of chickens, basically it's great, cute chicks in the spring, an awesome bantam named "Fenders" because he had fenders. I liked to toss him way up in the air, because bantams fly so well. (Once they're up there)
Chickens are generally a feel-good experience, but don't think there isn't a dark side. I've been there.

When I was little there was a terrible rooster that my father loved. (MORE THAN ME!) He named him Dracula, because he was shiney and black, and liked to pull his wing up over his beak before tearing into you. I didn't like Dracula.

One day I was merrily pumping away on the two seater swing, and Dracula comes along to rip me up. So I'm stranded on the swing-set, pumping higher and higher, trying to get away from this flapping menace.

Up and away! Then swooping down into the danger zone, up and away! The swing set is rocking, because I've never gone so high before, and Dracula is leaping at me, and flattening on the ground as I graze over the top of him. 

I'm like "Gee! I hope I don't knock Dracula's block off and kill my father's favorite bird! But I'd like to not get massacred either." I guess it left after a while.

Those crappy roosters wound up in the pot eventually. They were so tough and stringy, that they still tormented me, even from the grave.  My father mostly chopped off their heads with a hatchet and a stump, except for the one time he wanted to see if it was true, that you could dispatch them with a snap of the neck. My father, struggling to choke his chicken next to the coop, until he gave up and used the ax. sigh.
Check me out!   (over and over) adamfarrington.com/

My friend Gina has long used chickens as subject matter in her art. I asked her, "Gina, what is up with you and chickens?" 

Later that day, she sent me 7 accounts of her most formative chicken experiences, that were so expressive and entertaining, I knew it would be folly to do anything other than to include her as my "guest blogger".

Anyway, here is a window to the Gina Phillips experience. 

My Chicken Stories….Why I’ll Never Be a Mother and How I Became a Vegetarian

Story 1:

I grew up with my mother, grandparents and five uncles in a very small house with a very big yard, in the country, in Kentucky…but right next to a busy interstate.  When I was about three, my uncles acquired some fighting cocks with the intention of participating in the sport of cockfighting…although I don’t recall ever witnessing a cockfight. These roosters were bright red, orange and black…scrappy and cantankerous and they just roamed the yard freely. There was one rooster that tried to fight me whenever I went outside wearing a particular pair of little red corduroy britches. The rooster was almost as big as me and I was very scared when this would happen. 

Story 2:

Around that same time, my mother bought some baby chicks at the feed store and gave them to me as an Easter present. Pretty soon, the fighting cocks and the regular ole Easter chicks got together and we had a nice flock of chickens that were not too mean but were just a little sassy. We never kept our chickens caged. They roosted in a box elder tree that had a nice fat branch that arched almost horizontally over the driveway. The hens made nests in the junkyard that took up a good portion of our yard. The junkyard was a by-product of the auto mechanic shop my grandfather operated on the property. 

When I was six years old, I was wandering around the mountains of used tires and junk when I came upon a lone chick that had belatedly hatched. The mother hen and the rest of her chicks were already out in the front yard, far away from this latecomer. I was the first living creature the chick laid eyes on and it assumed that I must be its mother. It started following me around and I thought it was a great thing…and I knew better than to try to put it in with the other chicks because the mother wouldn’t accept it as one of her own, even though it had just been a few hours. I played with the chick all day long and after a while, I decided I should set a good example as surrogate chicken mother, so I squatted down and waddled around low to the ground and flapped my “wings” and made those low, cackling mother hen noises. 

The little chick happily ran around my feet as I acted like a mother hen. Well, towards the end of the day, I was waddling around and lost my balance and fell back and squashed the baby chick and killed it. It was a heartbreaking thing and I cried and cried. My mother tried to make me feel better by telling me she would get me a puppy. 

I really believe this formative experience may explain my lifelong squeamishness about the idea of becoming a mother. It was around that time that I declared I would never have children.

Story 3:

One of my favorite things about chickens is the way a chicken will keep its head in the same spot while you’re holding it and moving its body back and forth….stretched out neck, scrunched up neck, sideways neck to the left, etc.

Story 4: 

My grandmother would let you know what an animal was saying. There was one hen that made those nice, low, cackling noises and my grandmother would say, “It’s singing that Rod Stewart song!” and she’d cackle the tune Don’t You Think I’m Sexy along with the chicken. The chickens sang other songs too, but that’s the one I remember specifically.

Story 5:

One time, my grandfather fell in the yard near a cantankerous mother hen who had her baby chicks all around her and she started flogging his head as he was lying on the ground.

Story 6:

We gave away the chickens around the time I was in middle school. We never had grasshoppers all those years the chickens lived free-range in the yard. The grasshoppers moved in after the chickens were gone…also that’s when the feral cat era began.

Story 7: 

After many years of not being around chickens, I used some chickens in an art installation I made while I was in college at the University of Kentucky. 

The art building at the University of Kentucky had formerly been a tobacco warehouse and it maintained a funky, cavernous, warehouse, anything-is-possible, kind of atmosphere. I think it was a great environment for art school.  It was far away from the more conventional campus buildings and it was situated right by some defunct railroad tracks. One day I was snooping around the tracks behind the building. I noticed there were some cave-like openings in the huge row of weedy bushes that lined the tracks. I peeked into one of the bush caves and realized that the long row of bushes had been turned into a long, continuous line of connecting hobo hotel rooms.

This whole scene was the inspiration behind my solution to a particular sculpture assignment. The assignment was to create a structure or space, somewhere within the art building, in which your own body could fit and become camouflaged within the structure. I created a hobo shack in an isolated side yard next to the building. The shack I built afforded even more comforts than the hobo hotel rooms in the bushes…it had a roof, windows, door, bed and even a fireplace. I was hiding in a secret compartment next to the chimney.  I had Vienna sausages and saltine crackers for the students to enjoy during the critique. I even had a fire going and water boiling on the grate. The chimney actually drew smoke pretty well! 

To complete the installation, I bought some live chickens and put them in a pen next to the shack.   I bought them from some people who lived way out in the country in the county where I grew up. It had been quite a few years at that point since I had been around chickens. I had never noticed how dirty they were when I was a kid. I had forgotten that the best way to carry a bunch of chickens all at once is to grab them by the feet and carry them upside down. I stuffed them in the trunk of my ’72 Montego to get them back to school. 

The experience of handling these chickens made me think about the chicken as a food source and for the first time I felt pretty grossed out about it.  I thought, “I can’t believe I eat these nasty creatures!” Soon after that, I stopped eating chicken but I continued to eat the other meats that are so processed that they don’t look like the animal any more…like cheeseburgers and pepperoni pizzas.  A couple of months after giving up chicken, I realized the hypocrisy and gave up meat altogether. 

The hobo-shack installation project with chickens as an accessory is the reason I became a vegetarian 19 years ago.

Look!   http://ginaphillips.org/home.html

So, in a nutshell, That's the chicken scene in New Orleans.
-Adam Farrington