Cannibals, Golf Balls, and Mustard Eggs

We were naive when it came to keeping animals, almost as naive as we were about having children. This didn't mean we thought it would be easy, we just knew we'd be up to the challenge. It would be fun.

Nobody told warned us that chickens are cannibals. We learned it quickly enough, as soon as one hen cut herself on a sharp bit of fencing. We rescued her in time, but just. A feeding frenzy had begun to form around her.

Nobody warned us that chickens sometimes eat the eggs, too. Once they start, it's a hard habit to break, and ours started this summer. Finding an eaten egg now and then is frustrating enough, but to find only one whole egg in a nest of egg shells and sticky remains is maddening. It's not like we're not feeding them enough already!

It became a crisis the other day when I watched one hen pull another one off her nest so she could peck open the egg. I swore. Loudly. I chased all the chickens out of the chicken house and went in and swore some more. My husband decided it was time to consult the experts and get some advice. He googled it. These suggestions are supposed to work because, as everyone knows, chickens are really stupid.

We tried putting golf balls in the nesting boxes. The idea is, if they peck at the golf balls, they don't get anywhere and don't get the reward of eating an egg. It didn't work. Seems our hens figured out the difference between an egg and a golf ball and started their own golf tournament in the chicken yard. Smart asses.

We then blew out a few eggs and filled them with mustard. We let the hens peck them open. Supposedly, hens do not like mustard and this would clearly teach them to avoid eating eggs. However, the hens quickly figured out which eggs were stuffed with mustard, ate the other ones, and offered the mustard eggs for sale on Craig's list as a delicacy.

It was suggested that the hens might need more protein in their diet. I was wondering why they wanted to read the back of the chicken food bag. The advice given on the internet was to feed them some cat food. This will give them the protein they are lacking and they will not need to eat their eggs. They love the cat food. They like it even more with eggs.

The last suggestion was to eat the chicken who are eating the eggs. This would be hard to do. Literally. Ever butcher and clean a chicken and get it ready to eat? It's gross, smelly, and makes you want to become a vegetarian or at least continue buying chicken already packaged and ready to cook. Besides, we have chickens so we can get eggs. If we eat the chickens, we wouldn't get eggs.

We have one more thing to try. A YouTube video shows how to make nesting boxes with painting trays - you know, the trays where you pour the paint when you're using a roller. A 5" wide board was placed on the back side of the tray and this was further blocked off by a wall. The idea is:

Chicken lays an egg. Egg rolls down the tray and through a slot just big enough for eggs and into the deep end of the paint tray where they are kept out of beak's reach. Theoretically, this should work. It means spending the next few weeks trying to figure out how to build the new nesting boxes, but if it works, it'll be worth it.

Maybe. I won't count my eggs yet.

Women and Body Image - loving ourselves now, not 5 pounds from now

Even before going to see the movie, “Muffin Top – A Love Story”, the issues of feminism, body image, sexuality, and a woman's right to decide what to do with her body had been on my mind a lot lately. I suspect it has something to do with having a 21-year-old daughter.

“Muffin Top” talks about what it means to be a feminist. Yes, you can still enjoy wearing make-up, coloring your hair, and even getting cosmetic surgery, if this is what you want to do. No, you don't have to buy into the fashion model ideal - which is stupid and impossible. It encourages women to love themselves now, not five pounds from now. I'll add to this, five pounds in either direction. My daughter rounds UP her weight when asked.

It would be nice to say these issues are dated, but they aren't. A few glances to the side bars while cruising the internet includes headlines such as:

“The Sexiest Celebrity Butts” (Guess what? Yep. They're all female)

“Controversial Skinny Pill Hits Nation” (Yep. There's a photo of a woman)

“Ten Women who Aged Horribly” (Really? Says who?)

There are also all those fashion magazines with the impossible models, photoshopped to look like Barbie dolls. The movie, based loosely on Cathryn Michon's book, “The Grrl Genius Guide to Sex (with other people)”, starts off with Cathryn's character, Suzanne, talking to her students in a university class on feminism. Soon after, Suzanne's husband leaves her for a younger, thinner woman and Suzanne is trying to figure out the whole dating scene again.

“Muffin Top” is a low budget film, made by Cathryn and her husband, author Bruce Cameron. Cathryn got her friends involved, women and men who read the script and liked the message. These include actors David Arquette, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Melissa Peterson, Retta, Dot Marie Jones, and delightfully, the late Marcia Wallace, playing herself. Bruce and Cathryn's dog, Tucker, also has a role. It is a fun and very funny movie, only occasionally going a little over the top (okay, it is called Muffin Top so it's appropriate) with scenes such as the ones with the weight loss guru, and becoming downright silly.

For the most part, I think they got their message across. Suzanne's lectures were particularly helpful in this. It did leave me with one thought. I understand the idea of cosmetic surgery being okay... and this is a movie set in Hollywood. However, for most women, cosmetic surgery will never be a choice. It's expensive and insurance doesn't cover it. Most of us need to learn to love our bodies without that option. There are also a lot of us who are feminists who choose not to wear make-up, high heels, or dyed hair. That's okay, too. 

The best part was seeing a feminist film with wonderful funny women, who come in all shapes and sizes, in lead roles, something rare in movies, and hearing a woman tell her story without feeling the need to constantly bash men. The male characters, except for few caricatures, are nice. They don't care about physical appearance nearly as much as the women do. Are we our own worst enemy?

All in all it was a fun romp and definitely worth seeing. It is available through instant download (go to the movie website: muffintopmovie.com) and, if you're lucky, you might be able to catch one of the Red Carpet Premiere showings, as we did.

When Novel Characters Go on Holiday

It's November, which is also called National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo, which is also called, How to Torture Yourself by Writing Fifty Thousand Words in Thirty Days or HoToYoWriFiThoWoThiDa. As a number of women in my author's group were joining in, I figured I would try it, too. It would be good practice for me and, who knows? Maybe I'll end up with one of those surprise successes and be the next J. K. Rowling.

First things first. I had to figure out what to write about. This didn't take too long. I went thirty-four years into my past and decided to write a novel based on my experiences working in a deaf/blind preschool. If nothing else, there were plenty of quirky characters involved. I remember the psychologist who came to the school to offer his advice and ended up talking mostly about the good old days when one could use electric shocks and other aversion techniques. It still makes me shudder.

Next? There wasn't really time to plan anything else. Suddenly it was November 1st and I had a word quota of approximately 1670 words per day over the next thirty days. I've learned a few things about writing in this way:

If you're working towards a word quota, always spell everything out. One thousand, six hundred and seventy counts as more words than 1,670. 

Don't go back and read what you wrote. You'll be tempted to delete something and that will take away from your word count.

Keep tea and chocolate on hand at all times.

Don't over think your writing. The characters sometimes just say what they are going to say. This is called, getting into the flow.

I was doing well with this until yesterday when one of my characters started to yawn. What's the matter, I thought, is my writing really so boring? He yawned again and I started yawning, too. It was contagious. I decided we all needed a day off. I announced this to my characters and let them know I would expect them back promptly the next morning. A couple of them cheered.

This isn't a new concept. I first learned of the secret lives of book characters when I read "The Eyre Affair" and "Lost in a Good Book", both by Jasper Fforde. The characters in these books travel around and generally do whatever they want to do at those times when they aren't needed for the story until page 178. 

If you haven't read these Thursday Next detectives stories, I would highly recommend them to anyone who enjoys intelligent literary humor and having your brain tied in knots while you try to figure out what's going on. Even if you read it just for the bookworms, who sometimes have digestive trouble and start farting apostrophes whi'ch make' eve'ry'one' tal'k li'ke thi's, you'll be glad you did.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the characters in my story. I decided they needed a break just as much as I did. It paid off. They were all back and ready to go to work today. Nobody yawned. I didn't ask them where they went or what they did. I figured it was their time and their business.

We're definitely back in the flow.