Animal Magnetism

The Pecking Order

Ever notice how there’s always a low man on the totem pole no matter what the group is? Herd and pack animals create hierarchies. Cats don’t, since every cat is the king or queen of all he or she surveys. Why hierarchies are so important I don’t know. I never will. On the one hand, they create stability. On the other hand, they engender suffering. The worst thing you can do to a pack animal is to remove it from the pack. Even being the bottom man isn’t as painful. No wonder solitary confinement is perceived as the worst punishment for a human, short of torture and death.

Chickens stick to their pecking order even more strictly than humans. A human has the possibility to rise through effort. A chicken doesn’t, until some of the higher chickens die. Then the bird can move up the ladder. But some birds, just like people, are so peculiar or outlandish to other members of their species that they can’t be borne.

Except for those times of purgatory when I had to live in cities to acquire my higher miseducation (the Greek and Latin were worth it) and to establish my career, I’ve kept chickens. When I was quite small, I fed them. In our family, as soon as you could walk, you were taught to perform service. You didn’t work, you didn’t eat. It only took being sent to bed a couple of times without supper to end laziness. Pride grows when you see your chores help the family.

Our chickens were Rhode Island Reds, Leghorns, and Plymouth Barred Rock. When I entered the pen they’d rush up to me. The cats reposed outside the pen, dreaming of the day when one, just one, chicken would escape. The dogs, bored stiff by the cackling, showed little interest.

One big white chicken, a Leghorn, was literally henpecked. She had no feathers on her back. Much as I felt sorry for her, she managed. One other chicken was ostracized from the group completely. I’d throw her cracked corn as far as I could, after putting out a big pile for the others, so she could eat in peace. She lived under the chicken house because the others drove her from it. I asked Mother if I should find her a pen of her own and Mother replied that the chicken would rather be near her own kind even though they mistreated her.

Feathers decorated hats then. The more exotic the feather, the more expensive the hat. All ladies and gentlemen wore hats. Everyone looked attractive. You acquire a sense of personality when you’re sporting a hat. Different hats were suitable for different occasions.

Didn’t matter if you dressed up to go to town or you bumped along on your Johnny Pop (a John Deere tractor that made a pop from the exhaust), your work hat or everyday hat became your signature.

Dress-up hats, church hats, and rain hats contributed to your turnout, but your work hat really was you. Mother’s work hat was a soft straw hat, wide brim, black grosgrain ribbon. She gardened in it, went to market in it. Sometimes in winter she wore a navy blue fedora.

One lady in Mother’s group of friends, Agnes, sported the best hats. She had pheasant feathers for sporting occasions, feathers I couldn’t identify but that were dyed for other social occasions. She favored capes, too. As she was statuesque and a registered redhead, every man in the county was in love with her except her husband. She craved affection and found it easily. When the wives of the men supplying the much-needed emotional attention discovered their husbands’ generosity, Agnes found herself the subject of sulphurous reaction. What fascinated me as a child was that the wives nine times out of ten put the husband on their reserve shit list, while Agnes topped it. Agnes didn’t take a vow to be faithful to their marriage, though the husbands sure did. Agnes wasn’t often invited to parties. She wasn’t completely ostracized, but she was often pushed outside the circle.

Mother liked her. The woman had a great sense of humor as well as style. And she wasn’t the first woman to look for love in all the wrong places. Divorce was a horrendous stain then. Better to be in a miserable marriage than no marriage at all. Her solution to the desiccation of her emotional life seemed better than no solution at all.

Around this time, when I was about seven, I noticed that many women drank secretly. It was one of many things I had observed in the adult world that mystified me.

The chickens lacked recourse to sippin’ whiskey. Their pleasure was their feed, hence plumpness. Some people take that route, too.

One of Agnes’s worst critics, Deirdre, was an engine of exclusiveness, forever stirring up other women. She’d make her bid at the bridge table and then casually look at her opponent and say, “Anne, saw Hoppy chatting up Agnes down at the filling station today. He checked her tire pressure before the grease monkey could get to it.” As Hoppy was Anne’s husband, this produced the desired effect.

Mother loathed this. Aunt Mimi learned to listen but she swore she didn’t like it either. Mother could turn away from gossip, cutting the person short. Sis had to hear the whole story, slapping on her moral cosmetics.

One day Mother and I walked through the town square as Agnes approached from the opposite direction. The two women waved, and when they reached each other, they noted the weather, the standard conversation opener in our parts. Then they moved on to events, politics, upcoming holidays. Agnes’s hat, green, resembled a Borsalino. A wide same-colored grosgrain ribbon banded it with a quarter-moon pinned on the side of the ribbon, badger fur protruding. A mass of pheasant feathers with a few red feathers interspersed provided a vivid backdrop for the groomed tufts of badger fur. I coveted that hat. Mother wore a simple slouch, I wore a lad’s cap. I still wear them, as they keep your head warm and they’re so comfortable.

Sure enough, sailing around the Square like an outrigger in a high wind, Deirdre approached. Her hat, broad-brimmed with cascades of ostrich feathers in electric purple, bounced as she clipped along. All she needed was a mainsail.

As she passed she called hello to Mother while snubbing Agnes. Agnes’s face turned red.

Mother said, “Agnes, don’t go out of your way to piss on a skunk.”

Agnes laughed, and that was that.

Later Aunt Mimi stopped by. The two sisters rarely passed a day without at least one visit, usually two.

Mother said, “Sis, saw Deirdre on the Square and she appears to have recovered from her recent bout of good health. I was talking to Agnes and Deirdre snubbed her. I know it was Deirdre even though I could barely see her face for the feathers on her hat—screaming purple, mind you.”

Aunt Mimi perked up, “What kind of feathers?”

“Vulture.”

Agnes persevered. As she aged and opportunities for outside affection waned, she accepted her lot. Like most women she needed her husband’s money to survive. A middle-class or working-class woman who could manage to get herself an education might become a nurse, a schoolteacher, or a secretary. But the wages were pitifully low. Small wonder divorce wasn’t an option. Agnes’s looks held up and she let her hair turn a beautiful silver. Little by little she moved further into the circle.

Deirdre ’s fulminations became tedious and she began to lose her position. She wasn’t shut out, but she wasn’t embraced either. Meanwhile, Mother, welcoming to most, kept her iron lock on the county. She deserved it. She was a natural leader.

My chicken, unloved except by me, hung in there, too. She lived a long life, always on the outskirts, still under the chicken house where she’d burrowed herself a deep hole. When the first frost came, around October 15, I’d lie flat on my belly and crawl under the coop to fill her hole with straw. Maybe she lived so long because she was hardened to the elements. Some of the other chickens, committing offenses unknown to me, were pecked to death over the years.

None of the ladies in Mother’s circle pecked one another to death, despite their fine feathers.

Today I have my chickens. There’s a serial killer in my coop. She hops into other nests to peck open the eggs. She eludes me. I think I know who it is and yet I’m not sure. I didn’t encounter this as a child. Surely my chickens know who this is. So far they’ve done nothing.

I’ve never caught a chicken thieving, but other birds certainly do it, and dogs are expert at it.

Cowbirds, on the other hand, aren’t much for stealing, but they’ll lay an egg in another bird’s nest, thereby avoiding paying college tuition. Think this strategy would work for us?