Walking Disaster

Those fucking birds.

Listen. I loved working on a ranch. The air was clean, there were horses and dogs and mini ponies and rats. There were also chickens, which were adorable and terrifying all at once. We started with around four, raised them from chicks, and so we just continued getting more! We had so much fun running around in their pen, finding out how to feed them and care for them.

No. That’s a lie. My manager was a bona fide chicken mother, but I had no idea what I was doing. They were weird, and creepy, they smelled terrible and they had these shifty eyes. I felt constantly on edge while stealing their unfertilized children for my breakfast. It should be noted that working on a ranch, with neighboring properties, almost everyone had animals with them during the day.

Ok so context out of the way, here’s what happened. We had gotten up to fourteen chickens at this point, or around that, and Darwin was bound to get involved somehow…

We were the southern branch of the company, the active ranch portion. When the company suits came by to visit, we tended to over clean, over prepare, and generally act disingenuous. It was vet techs and grooms and horse riders opening the doors for lawyers, human resources personnel, accountants and, most importantly, the owner. So after a morning of meetings, and a break for lunch, they decided the best idea would be to shadow the facilities manager as he makes his rounds around the property. After a few stops, they make it to the orchard area, where there are various fruit trees, a garden, vegetable patch, and the chicken coup. By the way, it’s already hilarious to see a bunch of people in suits and nice shoes tour a five star ranch, but put them in the middle of a giant dirt lot and suddenly things become so much funnier. Before we can start touring the area, one of the facility employees approaches the manager and quietly mentions there’s an issue. He tries to pass it on to me, telling his employee that I can handle it and give him an update after the fact, to which the employee disagrees.

After quietly arguing and with the employee not giving an inch in regards to having someone other than the facilities manager handle this seemingly insurmountable problem, the manager finally agrees. This is when all the corporate think-heads say the worst thing they could possibly say, “we’d love to come with you and see how you handle problems.” No one happened to notice the sheer panic overtake the employees face, but everyone was already on their way over. We reach the chicken coup to see the aftermath of a complete massacre.

Out of the fourteen chickens, only about five and a half remained. I say half, because there was one half dead, twitching chicken clinging to life best she could. Awkward is an understatement. There was a bumbling, inelegant discussion concerning poultry ethics, and whether the suffering chicken should be saved (we had a vet on call), or she should be put out of her misery. During this deliberation, the facility guy’s brown lab, who had only the best of intentions, chose now to come over from wherever she was, and pounced on the now ex-chicken.

The facility manager is horrified, the corporates are disgusted and scandalized, the brown lab is feeling very proud, and I had to leave the scene because I was the only one that could not stop laughing. I figured I had to pretend to be useful somehow, so I went and got one of the riders, and another facilities guy, a delightfully absurd French-Canadian. Now, the insanity doesn’t stop there, because we all unanimously decided that we were going to try hard to keep it from the operations manager, the chicken mother herself. In doing so, we decided to use a dog kennel as a pseudo coffin for the deceased, and then move the surviving chickens into the coup while they got over their trauma. Unfortunately, in a classic case of cascading failures, the miscommunication between the French-Canadian, the rider and I, we accidentally ended up shoving live chickens in with their dead friends. It was technically torture, and in retrospect, hilarious.

After a long messy process, the bloodbath had been cleaned up, and we eventually figured out it was a German Shepherd that belonged to someone at the neighboring ranch. Apparently he was in a hunting mood. The dog’s person immediately offered to replenish our chicken stock, but refused to pay for chicken trauma counseling. Which is fine, I guess.

Now that would be the end of it…if we didn’t have to wait until the traumatized suits left, because then we had to break the news to the chicken mother. We decided to give her wine, and break the news gently. Unfortunately once she found out her favorites, including Sassy and Hotpants, had been murdered, it turns out bourbon was more her speed.