Fortunately, Ovid’s wing is not broken, only badly sprained. He stays at the raptor center, recuperating, for three months. I get a letter with photographs of him being released back into the wild. My heart soars as I see his big barred body and enormous wing span effortlessly gliding over the tops of pine trees to freedom.

           Our first rooster was a turken. A turken isn’t really a cross between a turkey and a chicken…it’s all chicken. It’s just that it has a naked neck so it looks like a turkey. In other words, it’s incredibly ugly. Our first rooster was also a mistake. We had ordered a couple dozen “hardy egg laying mix” chicks from McMurray Hatchery that came in the mail on Easter morning. This mix included one “exotic” chick that ended up being a male turken.

          At first I thought that maybe all the other chicks were pecking the feathers out of this poor little one’s neck. It looked so bare and wrinkled and vulnerable. This chick with the bare neck also had a top-knot of yellow feathers that stuck straight up on top of its head…so when he pecked he looked like a fantasy bird from a Dr. Seuss book. Soon it became pretty evident that this guy was growing bigger and stronger and bossier than all the rest.

          As he matured, his feathers were a beautiful golden color with long curved tail feathers, but his damn neck was impossible to ignore. His neck was so scrawny and scaly…he looked like a train wreck. Hence, he was named Imus, and he developed the same sexist attitude.

          Imus was a pretty reasonable chap, leading and protecting his beautiful free-range flock of multi-colored girls. Reasonable, that is, until the big “Chicken Holocaust of ‘99” when he snapped and literally lost his mind. A dog from down the road, a huge brutish Chow named Tony, came into our yard when we weren’t home and killed 17 of our girls for sport. Apparently, Imus fought to save them but he was no match for Tony. There was carnage and feathers everywhere. A neighbor, Mr. O’Boyle, sadly brought a wheel barrow full of carcasses from his lawn. We were devastated. So was Imus. I’m sure Imus felt like he had failed in his duty to protect his harem. He was never the same after that.

          I, on the other hand, was furious. I called the local animal control officer and he read me the rules about protecting domestic livestock from predators. I called Tony’s owner and told him if his Chow was ever in our yard again…I was going to shoot him. I meant it. We never saw that dog again.

          But the damage was done. Imus became a ferocious lunatic when he thought the hens were being threatened. Unfortunately, that included us. It became almost impossible to go in to the coop to feed them. I had to approach the coop with a garbage can lid like a shield and a hockey stick to fend off Imus who would fly at me, razor-sharp spurs first. It became a nightmare chore to deal with him.

          The deciding event was when Imus attacked a little boy who was visiting my birth center. That was just too much. Short of sending Imus to a chicken therapist and putting him on Prozac, I decided to foist him off on my good friend Kendall. Why she agreed to take him in, I’ll never know, but she did. I put on leather fire-place gloves and threw a towel over Imus when he was sleeping and drove him to Kendall’s in the middle of the night.

          Kendall’s coop was a funky structure that had a metal roof under a high window. Somehow, Imus discovered how to escape out the window every morning and slide down the metal roof to the yard below. It was a pretty amazing sight to see this big awkward bird sliding on his back with his feet sticking straight out in front of him, his bare neck arched forward, the whole way down to freedom.

          Imus was lucky. He got to spend several more years in this world as a solitary bird until one day he just never returned from roaming.

         What I learned from Imus is that roosters take their role as flock champion very, very seriously.

 ARMAND THE GOOD

           Our second rooster was an impossibly handsome Columbian Wyandotte. This rooster had a rose-comb and beautiful long, curved tail feathers that were black and green iridescent in the sun. He was a big boy and he knew he was gorgeous, he proudly strutted his stuff. This rooster, Armand, was friendly and very polite…but he was also insanely horny. Even though Armand had a couple dozen “girlfriends” to entertain him, he was insatiable. He was very considerate and gentle though, he never ripped up the girls like some other clodhopper roosters do. He always did this little two-step, sideways shuffle mating dance with one wing fanned out to impress a girl and get her in his orbit before he mounted her. His idea of sexy chicken foreplay, I guess.

          One time early in Armand’s mating career, a nice, conservative neighbor from down the road was visiting. This older gentleman and I were standing on the lawn chatting when Armand came over and mounted a hen at the man’s feet. Armand banged the snot out of her right there. When Armand was finished, the hen straightened up and shook her feathers indignantly and stomped away.

          The older man’s mouth was dropped open. He said, “Did he just…? Jesus.”

          He shook his head and went home.

          After a couple of years, Armand developed a mild respiratory affliction that occasionally made it hard for him to crow, kind of seemed like a severe sore throat. I accidentally found a cure one night when I had Armand in the living room in front of the woodstove to see if heat would help. I was drinking Scotch and Armand walked over and took a beak full of Scotch. He sneezed and took another beak full. He crowed like hell the next morning. Every once in a while I think he was faking a sore throat just so he would be invited in for a cocktail. Armand was the only Scotch drinking rooster I ever heard of.

          Armand also fathered the only chick ever to be hatched on our farm. This lack of hatchlings was probably more my fault than Armand’s. Armand was definitely hitting the mark. I just couldn’t leave the fertilized eggs alone. Not trusting nature to take Her course, I was always messing with them, so the one chick that hatched was a total surprise.

          One night Tom and I returned home from dining out when we both went in the coop to say Goodnight to the ladies and gentleman. It was actually unusual for us to both be in the coop at the same time. I picked up one of the broody white Silkies that was setting on a clutch of eggs…and there was a fuzzy yellow golf-ball with two tiny black eyes looking back at us. She looked as astounded as we did.

           Tom laughed, “Well, one actually made it despite your help.”

          “Oh my god, this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” I sighed.

          I named her “Winona” which means “first-born.”

          I sat for a couple of hours watching them and I had the unbelievable good fortune to see the mother Silkie teach Winona how to eat. The mother picked up a kernel of cracked corn, dropped in front of the baby and then peck…peck…pecked it and swallowed it. Winona just stood there watching. The mother repeated her lesson, although this time she peck…peck…pecked a little more empathically. Winona still didn’t move. This time the mother hen took the corn and in frustration PECK…PECK…PECKED! pounding until Winona hopped over and pecked it and swallowed it. I swear I saw the mother hen roll her eyes as if to say, “We got a real live wire in this one.”

          Armand had an illustrious career that would have made any Casanova proud. He died one night in the dead of winter. I went into the coop in the morning and found him lying stiff and cold on the floor. I was immeasurably sad that I hadn’t realized he was so gravely ill. Maybe his death could have been prevented if only I had invited my old friend in for a nightcap.

 LEWIS AND CLARK

            A French woman who had a baby born at my birth center gave me her whole flock of Bantam chicks because she had to suddenly move out-of-state. The chicks were a great addition except when they matured, most of them were roosters. I already had Armand at the time and I didn’t want to cause any unrest in a perfectly contented flock…so I tried to give the fledgling roosters away. Nobody but nobody wanted a pack of testosterone driven, fowl tempered, teenaged male chickens.

It got to the point where they began challenging Armand’s dominance as he was an aging rock-star by then. I couldn’t stand the fighting. I decided to drive them deep into the woods and let them go to support the local wildlife. I know this sounds cruel but my neighbors, who are farmers, do this all the time. I let all the fuzzy-footed boys go with a prayer that their demise would be swift and painless.

About four days later, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Two of the young Banty roosters had somehow made it back to the chicken yard. This means they had crossed a major stream, went up and over a good sized hill in the forest and down a very long, overgrown field to get home. Because of their obvious excellent navigational skills, I named them Lewis and Clark.

Lewis could fly, however, and he wouldn’t stay in the coop at night. He would fly up in to a tree and roost there instead of in the hen house. I told him this was a pretty precarious habit, really not conducive to life but he refused shelter. I was right. One morning, I saw a trail of Lewis’s brown-colored feathers going down the driveway and I knew Lewis was gone.

Clark, however, wasn’t going anywhere. He knew a good thing when he saw it. By now Armand was departed and Clark became the new king of the roost, although he was very short and had a nasty temper. I think Clark had “short man syndrome”, seriously, he was mean to the girls who were much bigger than he was. In short, Clark was a little bastard.

People told me Banty roosters could be fierce and Clark was no exception. He raked all the hens’ backs with his spurs when he mated with them until their backs were bloody and featherless. He was jealous of the big hens and made them cower in the corner to avoid his vicious attacks.

It all culminated one day when I went into the chicken yard and Blackie, a huge black Australorp, came running to me and jumped in my arms for help. Her eye was hanging out by the stalk. Clark had gouged out her eye in a jealous rage. I was not turning a blind eye to this domestic violence situation any longer.

I asked Tom if he would help me kill Clark. We had never done this before, but Tom set up a log chopping block and got his axe. I held Clark’s neck over the block and Tom took one swift chop and Clark’s head was on the ground. Here’s where I made a mistake. I let go of Clark’s body. He began flying crazily all around the yard in a frenzied zigzag pattern. Headless. It was quite unnerving.

Tom said, “F$%^!…it really is true.”

I buried Clark behind the compost pile but I didn’t have any remorse. He was a terrible example of male macho chicken shit. Good riddance.

The next morning, when I opened my front door, I screamed to see Clark’s head lying on the door mat.

The dogs had left me a trophy.

P. DIDDY, NH’S SMALLEST COCK

          I got our current rooster at the Davisville Flea Market; please don’t ask what possessed me. Obviously, I didn’t know he was a he until some time later when he attempted his first crowing. His voice cracked like any other adolescent male but he was loud.

This rooster is about the size of a healthy banana. Truly, I believe I may have New Hampshire’s smallest cock. But even in his mini state, he is a true stunner. P. Diddy is golden hued with blue and red feathers, almost like a small ornamental pheasant. He looks like an Aztec headdress shining in the sun. Bling!

Anyway, the girls absolutely adore P. Diddy. They follow him around and he finds choice worms for them. He is the only rooster I’ve ever heard who actually chuckles. He makes sounds of pure delight when he finds a choice morsel for the girls. He always gives it to them first, at his expense. Such a suave gentleman. When they roost at night, P. Diddy is ensconced underneath the breasts of two of the largest hens, his little head sticking out from beneath their curvaceous, bodacious down feathers. If a rooster could smile deliriously, this’d be it.

P. Diddy is the Tom Cruise of the chicken kingdom. He’s tiny for sure, but somehow, he knocks the ladies dead. When he crows, he puts his all into it. He stands on his tip-toes and throws his head back and he almost falls over backwards every time he lets it rip. But he gets the job done. At first, I thought I might have to get him a step-ladder or something…but nope. He is so fast and so on target, when he’s done the hens look around like, “What was that breeze?”

One night this spring, P. Diddy was not in the roost at dusk. I didn’t find him until the next morning when I heard a feeble attempt at a crow. I found him on his side in the back field, staggering and still trying to crow to alert the flock to danger. He had been beaten up very badly by a skunk and left for dead. I thought he was blind and brain damaged. His eyes were swollen shut and he couldn’t stand or eat.

I brought him in the house and put him in the “Chicken Whisperer” which is a woven basket with a top that is warm and dark and safe. I fed him with an eyedropper for two weeks until he hobbled out of the basket to protect and be with his beloved girls once again. I swear they celebrated his return; the noise of their joy at seeing him alive was awesome.

He made a complete recovery. Today he is running around on his fast little, road-runner legs making sure everyone is accounted for.

Long Live P. Diddy!  He’s the Man!

_____________________________________________________________

 Carol Leonard is a midwife and a writer and is the author of the best-selling memoir, Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart, A Midwife’s Saga, Bad Beaver Publishing, 2008. For further info, go to www.badbeaverpublishing.com.

I call my snowmobile Medusa. I named her that because she is black with yellow flames shooting out of her hood and along her sides. The flames remind me of snakes writhing from the Gorgon’s head. Medusa is fearless and powerful…and patient.

Right now I am listening to Medusa’s throaty rumble as I get up the courage to follow in AJ’s tracks. His tracks have gone up a steep incline, a cliff face actually, and have disappeared over the top. I look back at my husband, Tom, who nods encouragement with his dark helmet. Tom is traveling behind me in case I get stuck…or worse. We are bushwhacking up an unchartered mountainside to an underground cave high above. What if I flip over with Medusa’s 1000 pounds landing on top of me? Then what? In the middle of nowhere with no cell phone coverage, crushed, unable to breathe, no chance of being airlifted out. Oh, for godsake, Carol, get a grip.

I gauge the incline ahead, which looks to me to be at least an 80 degree angle. I look out over the vista behind me and get a little vertigo. Below me is a breathtaking vista of lakes dotted with islands and white-capped mountains as far as the eye can see. Rumble. I can feel Medusa’s impatience and give her permission to go. She bounds up the mountain-side like it is a mere speed bump, not a hint of a skid.

I love this sled.

In my youth, I was a purist and scoffed at snow-machines. Give me a good set of snow-shoes or cross-country skies any day. No motorized snow sports for me! But several years ago, in my late fifties, Tom gave me a Polaris Indy 500 for a present. She has heated hand-warmers, heated face-shield, a comfy stretch-out seat, reverse. Actually, she is the nuts. Her speedometer says she can go 120 MPH. Yeah, right…I have never even gone close to half that speed.

I realize now I would never have seen so many natural wonders right in our own backyard in NH and Maine if it wasn’t for two-stroke smoke. Like today, as we traverse up the side of Magalloway Mountain in the remainder of the early spring snow. We are looking for an underground cave towards the summit that AJ knows about.

We stop for lunch at a sunny spot on the slope and unpack our sandwiches and Genesee beer. I have already floundered in the snow up to my crotch and had to roll over on my back to get my legs free, so now I sit on Medusa’s strong, warm seat munching my sandwich where I am safe from getting swallowed up by quick-snow.

AJ says in wonderment, “How is it that these guys always find us?”

He holds up a piece of bread in his hands as a silent shadow swoops from a branch and snatches the bread from his fingers. A Canadian Jay—Perisoreus canadensis—also nicknamed the “Camp Robber.” This little guy is about 10-13 inches long and is slightly larger than a robin. He is gray on his upper body and white on the lower part and has a white forehead and throat and a patch of black on the back of his head. He doesn’t have a crest on his head like our common blue jays do at home. Apparently, this guy doesn’t realize he has crossed the Canadian border which is a few miles away.

It is a mated pair. The female is waiting in another tree. I hold up a piece of bread and she gracefully lands on my hand. I am surprised that her tiny feet are so gentle. I expect her to immediately fly away, but she looks right at me with her round little black eyes and I can clearly feel her say, “12 Grain Multigrain—nice!”

~ Carol feeding a female Canadian Jay ~

AJ says the cave isn’t much further ahead. AJ is Tom’s best friend and they have covered this area a lot. This is my first time in Pittsburg as it is a four hour trip from home pulling the sleds in a trailer. The trip is totally worth it though; I am loving every minute of it.

Perhaps emboldened by the Gennys, I follow AJ again to the top without mishap. We find the cave which at first looks like a huge natural depression in the snow. Then I see the tumble of glistening wet rocks which actually form a tunnel down into the ground to the cave below.  The guys put on head lamps and scramble down the tunnel. My claustrophobia kicks into high gear. My stomach lurches. I begin to sweat. There is just no way I’m going down that hole. Maybe I was buried alive in a past life (just kidding…sort of) but I can’t do places that have no clear exit plan.

I say, “I’m good up here. Don’t wait up on my account.”

Tom says, “Wow! Look at all the phosphorescence in here.”

I call down, “Nope, still not working.  But nice try, honey.”

Tom calls up, “Hey, there’s a bat in here.”

I ask, “Does it have white on its nose?”

He answers, “Yes…and white stuff all over its wings too.”

I yell, “Holy %^#$^!! Are you kidding me?!?

I am down the tunnel and into the cave in a heartbeat.

 ~ Little brown bat with white fungus on its nose in the Magalloway Cave, Pittsburg, NH ~ Photo by Carol Leonard, 3/5/2010.

Sure enough, this little brown bat’s nose and wings are caked with a white powdery fungus, Geomyces destructans. I have been reading about this syndrome for a while now. I know that the “white-nose” fungus has wiped out 90% of our local bat population; it has killed more than a million bats in the Northeast in the past two years. This little guy is still alive, I think anyway, as he is still hanging head-down from the rock face and is not on the ground. He hasn’t starved to death yet.

“Oh, you sweet cunnin’ little thing.” I feel like my heart will break.

“Poor little bastard.” AJ says.

This problem is a symptom of the larger decline in our ecosystem’s health. My theory is that with the milder and more temperate winters now in the Northeast, the bat caves are not getting cold enough to kill off the fungus during hibernation (not the other way around as some scientists believe.) Geomyces destructans grows best at temperatures of about 41-50 degrees F. When they hibernate, bats lower their body temperatures to within a degree or two of the temperature of the cave. If the NH caves’ temperatures are hovering around 40 degrees F, then the bats’ body temperatures remain high enough to be the perfect petri dish for the WNS fungus to grow.

And of course, the larger impact of losing 90% of our bats in the Northeast means…more insects. Bats eat thousands of pounds of agricultural pests and nuisance species like moths and beetles and mosquitoes every summer. It’s terrifying to think about the ways that devastation of the bat population could ripple through our ecosystem.

“I’ll call NH Fish and Game to report that the fungus is this far north,” I say, feeling really crappy.

 ~ Tom and AJ in the Magalloway tunnel ~

On the way back to our camp, I’m consumed with ways to lower the temperatures in the caves, ridiculous as that may be. Tom is trying his best to distract me and cheer me up. As we are crossing the huge expanse of smooth ice of First Connecticut Lake, he zooms up along side of me and flashes me the V sign.

I know he is grinning inside his helmet, “Wanna drag?”

I nod back, “You’re on, Bubbalouie.”

On this day I exceed my own prior personal best. I go a MPH for every year I’ve been alive on this earth. Medusa and I go like a bat out of hell.

) O (

Carol Leonard is a writer and a midwife, her husband, Tom Lajoie, is a phenomenal economy of motion builder. They have a camp on a 400 acre parcel of land in Ellsworth, Maine where they have just named their outhouse: CAMP KWITCHABITCHIN.

Sunday, February 14, 2010 ~

I open my eyes and realize it’s Valentine’s Day! I am excited because I get to spend the whole day with Tom, as he’s taken the day off from his compulsive work schedule to appease me. I roll over and pinch him. He squints open one sleepy blue eye.

I say, “Happy V.D. Tom!”

He yawns and stretches. “So what do you want to do today?”

I say, “What I really want to do for Valentine’s Day is to look for fox blood in the snow.”

Tom rolls his eyes up and looks at the ceiling. He stares for a while then he sighs, “Some people really know how to party.”

Probably not the sexiest thing he had in mind.

I learned the day before, when I did a winter mammal tracking afternoon with a naturalist for the NH Forest Society, that in mid-February fox pair up as mating season begins. The female fox territorially marks the snow with her blood as she enters estrus, announcing that she is fertile. I have never seen this before.

Tom gets up and begins to dress. “I’m pretty sure I know of a place where we will see this.” What a good sport. I quickly pack a picnic lunch.

Tom grew up in this countryside and when he was a kid, he and his brothers, the Lajoie boys, used to roam the woods far and wide. We drive to the hills that surround the water reservoir for the City of Concord. We park in front of a sign that says: “NO TRESPASSING. PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY” and start hiking up a walking trail, our boots crunching in the snow. Our two black mutt-girls, Gladys and Phaedra, are running around insanely happy to be in the wild, sniffing every little piece of scat they can find, and then peeing on it. It really is so good to be out in the woods.

After several minutes, the trail opens out on to a wide frozen beaver pond surrounded by snow covered hills. I whisper, “Wow. I never knew this was here. This is beautiful.”

Tom grins, “Yeah, I used to fish this pond when I was a kid.”

We walk around the perimeter of the pond checking out animal tracks. Snowshoe hares, fishers, coyotes…although it is increasingly harder to distinguish the coyote prints from our domestic dogs who are still bounding around looking delirious with their tongues hanging out and their eyes bulging with excitement. We find several moss-covered porcupine dens in the banks along the edge of the pond, the entrances filled with porcupine poop and tons of quills that have rubbed off as the porkies go in and out.

We head off the pond and scramble up a ravine and up a hill that has the remains of an old fire tower at the summit. It is pretty steep going and half way up the hill I feel like I just might keel over and die. I am gasping for air. Tom is bounding up ahead with the dogs, although in my defense, even the dogs have slowed down a little bit. They keep looking back at me as I haul my pathetic 60 year old butt up the trail. Gawd. I have got to start exercising.

Tom waits for me near the top as I huff and puff up to him, my face beet red. He looks down the hill and says, with a trace of nostalgia in his voice, “My brother, Ken, and I used to ride our mountain bikes up this hill when we were in our twenties.”

I look at him. Is he kidding? That was, like what, last year for him? Jasus, what a weisenheimer.

We go over the top of the hill facing the north side where we get a clear view of Long Pond, the water reservoir, through the winter barren trees. The sky is overcast, leaden with coming snow. We find a great dry log and kick the snow in front of it in a circle to make a little fire to cook our hotdogs for lunch. (I don’t usually make a habit of eating nitrite-laden tube-steaks…but for some reason, there is nothing better in the whole world than a hotdog burnt to splitting over an open fire—with a little mustard.)

Getting the fire going with snow damp leaves and miscellaneous wood takes a little patience, but Tom gets a rip-roaring, spark-crackling fire going soon enough. It gets cozy and warm. We sit together on the log with our hotdog sticks stuck in the coals, listening to the wiener fat start to make the coals sizzle. We place two tube-steaks on mustard-covered bread and we share a bottle of Chardonnay. (I know, I know…hot dogs with Pouilly Fuisse? Yeesh, how tacky.)

I look at my husband. I am filled with such fondness for him.

I toast him, “Tom, it doesn’t get much better than this. Happy Lupercalia!”

He grins at me, “There is nothing else in the world I’d rather be doing right now. This sure beats being home on the couch watching the Daytona 500.”

At this moment, for some reason, Gladys and Phaedra get into a horrible fight over a prize stick. This hasn’t happened in years. Why this stick is so important is beyond us, but they are seriously locked in a death grip. Both dogs were happily chewing at each end of a long stick…this arrangement was fine until they got to the middle of the stick…then bedlam ensued. Neither one will back down. The racket is deafening. It looks potentially physically damaging. The only thing I can think of to do to break them up is to stand up and klonk each dog on the head with the empty wine bottle. This gets their attention. They remove their teeth from each other’s throats.

Tom just looks at me. He says, “Honey, that’s the most red-neck thing I have ever seen in my life.” (Coming from him…that’s something.)

When we are done our Valentine’s snack, we trample out the fire with the snow and pack up to leave. Tom walks over the hill and I go to pee behind a pine tree. Peeing in the snow is a feat in itself, and the only sage wisdom I have for women in the winter is to be sure that you are not inadvertently squatting over the back of your parka. Otherwise, you will be soggy and squishy and will have to pretend all the way home that you spilled wine on your coat.

I follow Tom’s tracks to where he is standing looking out over a cliff. He turns to me and his eyes are sparkling. He points down to the huge granite out-cropping below and there they are. Woven in and out of the myriad caves is a network of bloody trails in the snow. Vixen blood!

I am speechless. I feel so honored and grateful to be able to witness this. I guess only a midwife would think that stumbling upon estrus blood in the wild is the coolest thing she has ever seen. Looking at all the blood, if I hadn’t known in advance what was going on; I would have assumed it was carnage from the bloody demise of many hapless little varmits.

This grisly scene makes me want to know more. Later I research “Estrus in Vulpes vulpes.” Here’s what I find: Estrus refers to the phase when the female fox is sexually receptive (‘in heat’.) The vixen exhibits a sexually receptive behavior, a situation that may be signaled by visible physiologic changes. Proestrus, judged by vulval swelling and reddening, begins 7 days before estrus and is accompanied by sanguineous (bloody) discharge. A signal trait of estrus is the lordosis reflex, in which the vixen spontaneously elevates her hindquarters. A single mating, followed by an extremely long “copulatory lock,” can average 1 hour 58 minutes.”

OWWW! No wonder fox scream so loud and so long in the night.

Satisfied that we have found what we were looking for, we slide and side-step our way down the steep, snow covered incline back to our truck. Such an awe-inspiring, wonderful day. I so appreciate Tom for being such a great guy.

Guess it’s time to go home and practice my lordosis reflex.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

Carol Leonard is a writer and a midwife, her husband, Tom Lajoie, is a forest steward and a phenomenal economy of motion builder.