Uniting the Flocks

It's still summer, and very hot outside, with occasional downpours of rain. The peaches are ripe. The apples and pears are still hard. It's summer, but as far as Sword is concerned, summer is almost over. Next Wednesday, she goes back to school. Bow and I will miss having her around all day, though Bow will never admit it. In preparation for school, Sword is now facing a difficult task: uniting her flocks.

Sword has been maintaining two separate groups of chickens all summer. The class of 2010, which were mere chicks this easter, and the class of 2009, three laying hens and a rooster. At first the little chicks were obviously too young to be introduced to their older counterparts. Then they grew. Now they are all about the same size.

Everytime they were introduced, the older hens, especially the most hen-pecked of them all, would viciously attack the pullets. The young pullets, for their part, would run off and try to escape. They never stood their ground. They never fought back. "They don't know how to fight back," Sword told me, "because they never peck at each other. They are always nice to each other. It's because I picked them out. The ones you picked last year were mean."

It's true. Sword picked the youngest, most helpless looking chicks when I gave her the chance to do so. The previous year, I picked the biggest and healthiest looking specimens. I was afraid that the younger, smaller looking chicks might die on us. I was looking for good layers. Sword was looking for good pets.

We have the most domesticated of domesticated birds. Sword picks them up and hugs them, and they allow all that. Because she was afraid to leave the two generations of hens together, even at night, Sword would pick the pullets up one by one and deposit them each in a bird cage inside the hen house at the end of the day, so that they could be safe from the others even at night. Every morning she would take them out of that cage, one by one, and put them in our separate outdoor chick enclosure. When we went away for four days, Sword had to train Lawrence to do the same in her stead.

But now she is going to be at school all day. She will still have chores with the chickens in the morning before she boards the school bus, but there won't be time to maintain this apartheid. So this morning, Sword united her flocks.

When she came to the pens to report on her efforts, Bow, as is his habit these days, jumped on the closest metal door and made such a racket that I couldn't hear a word Sword was saying. He has taken to making such displays every time someone new enters the room, and it can be rather annoying and distracting. It is clearly an act of aggression, and he can't seem to help himself, as even being sprayed with water is not much of a deterrent. As a result of all this interference by Bow, I had to leave him for a moment and go to Sword's room to hear her report. "The younger hens have gone in to the hen house and the older ones are in the yard. The door to the hen house is open, but they don't want to come out. Sometimes the rooster goes in to look at them, but they pretend not to see him and look at the wall or get really busy eating a bug."

"But they're not hurting each other?" I asked.

"No. The big brown one wanted to, but I punished her, and she stopped."

"Good," I said and went back to Bow. He was sitting on the potty, waiting for me to wipe him. If I leave him alone even for a minute, he always takes this opportunity to use the potty. I can't walk away for any length of time. Bow and I spend all day together, but every single time someone else comes into the pen area, he creates a great big racket and tries to scare them away.

Is aggression in chickens, in chimps or in humans, in-born or learned? I think it's a little of both, and the degree that it is in-born varies from individual to individual. Selection of the less aggressive individuals over the more aggressive can also work to tone down the aggressive instincts of the group as a whole. Are all chimpanzees aggressive? Well, yes, compared to humans on average. Are they all equally aggressive? No. Is all the aggression only a matter of nurture? Clearly, not. Bow and Sword were raised together in the same environment. He's much more aggressive than she is. But on the other hand, he is much less aggressive than he could be. He can be very sweet, and he does exercise great forbearance in his relations with me and Lawrence.

Is there a future for chimpanzees and humans together? There might be, but the aggression issue has to be dealt with. To some extent, it's a matter of nurture. But it is also a matter of selection. If a chimp is too aggressive to deal with, then fewer people will deal with him. It's as simple as that.

Peaches Aplenty

http://www.well.com/user/amnfn/BowEatsPeach.AVI

It's peach season again. Our trees are bearing plenty of fruit, and we have peaches with every meal. So much so, that I have taken to not always offering Bow a peach, because he has become blasé, and is not finishing every one. Plenty and wastefulness go hand in hand, and this reminded me of an old hub that I published on the subject two years ago during peach season: More Than We Can Possibly Eat.

In nature, when things seem to go to waste, they don't really go to waste. If the mammals and birds don't eat the fruit when it is ripe, then the the worms and the ants will finish off the job. And whatever else is not consumed will be absorbed in the ground and help to fertilize next year's crop. Sometimes we have good years and sometimes not so good. The year after I wrote that hub was a bad year. The blossoms were killed by a late frost. Because we don't depend on our peaches for sustenance, we can treat the good years as a bonus, and we can afford to be very philosophical about the bad years. If more people looked at having a job the way we do our peach supply, then fewer people would be so hard hit by fluctuations in the job market.

The other side of the coin is, the peaches really cost us nothing. I didn't plant the trees, I didn't fertilize them, I didn't water them, and I did not spray them with insecticide. I don't need a return on my investment, because there is no investment. All I did was buy the property, because I needed a place to live.

However, keep in mind that it also takes time to pick the fruit. If I am very busy doing other things, I have less time to pick fruit. A part time job or too great a pre-occupation with my online writing, for instance, could keep from getting out and picking the fruit that is ours by right. This is an example of how too much employment and not enough free time might actually lead to failure to consume available resources.

The more fruit I pick from my own trees, the less fruit I buy at Wal*Mart. If I had a full time job, I would not have time to pick fruit, and the economy would gain from all this buying and selling, but Bow and Sword and I would lose. When they talk about unemployment as a waste of human resources, they forget about the peach factor.

Would it be a good investment in the future for me to plant more peach trees? Not really, because I can't harvest anymore myself, and paying someone else to do so would in all likelihood destroy the benefit of having the extra fruit.

I want to have fruit trees lining the farther shores of Bow's island someday, but he and his family can't be trusted to harvest the fruit without damaging the trees. If only there were some way to use the force of gravity to deliver the ripe fruit to Bow and his kin without any harvesters, then we could have a self-sustaining economy! Maybe we should plant trees on little hillocks, and arrange funnels in the air above the island? Seems a little  tricky. It will take more thought!

Liked the Music, Not the Movie

While I was away for four days, Lawrence and Bow watched two videos together. The first was Phantom of the Opera. After they had finished watching, Lawrence asked Bow: "Did you like the movie?"

 Bow spelled: "I liked the music but I didn't like the movie."

The second video they watched was The Wizard of Oz. When Lawrence asked Bow about it, Bow had no reservations. "I liked the movie," he spelled.

Good to Be Home

Sword and I were away for four days, and we returned home last night around 10:00 pm. Bow, who was supposed to be asleep, was watching me from the pens as I unlocked the front door.

Sword went straight for her room, to check on her parrot, Summer. The chickens were already locked away for the night, and the dogs were in the laundry room, where they've been sleeping. Everyone was in tip top  condition, thanks to Lawrence who stayed here close to thirteen hours a day in my absence.

After Bow has gone to bed for the night, I don't usually like to disturb him, but since he was wide awake, I went in and sang him "the Pomegranate Tree." He was very mellow. There was no teary reunion. He had been in good hands in my absence, he was happy to see me, but not at all surprised. I had phoned and talked to him every day during my absence, and he was apprised of my itinerary.

This morning, I asked him: "Did you know I was coming back?"

"Yes," he spelled.

"Was everything okay when I was gone?"

"All okay," he spelled.

Later, at breakfast, he complained: "The guy didn't give me enough grapes." (This is not a complaint I take seriously.)

"What did he give you, instead?"

"Just stuff."

"Did he let you have some of his cereal?"

"Yes."

And then he added: "Every mommy is good." That was as close to a welcome back that I got.

"Thank you, Bow," I said.

It's good to be home.

Distributing Strawberries Evenly

Do you ever think that we get so bogged down in our ability to count things that we forget they might not all be of equal value or of the same size? When I am working on a project, sometimes I assess my progress by the number of files I have completed. But if some of the files are in the megabytes and some in kilobytes, is it any wonder that the assessment is not all that useful? The same principle apparently holds for the equitable distribution of strawberries, as Bow reminded me this morning.

I had six strawberries, which I hoped to divide equally among Sword, Bow and me. I meticulously counted them out, and then I went over to Bow's side to see what he would ask for first, his big bunch of grapes, or his small, but equitable allotment of strawberries.

Bow took my hand and spelled: "Again you get more."

I knew he must be talking about the strawberries, because he clearly got more grapes than I did, as I didn't get any. "But Bow, we have the same number. I have two and you have two."

Bow spelled: "Yours are big."

I looked at them. They were bigger! I really didn't intend to cheat Bow. I had been too busy counting to notice anything else. "Do you want to switch?" I asked.

"Yes."

We switched, and he immediately asked to eat the strawberries first.

Bow asks for his ball

This morning, Bow and Lawrence were outside in the outer pen, and Lawrence was reading to Bow about King David. Suddenly Bow went to the door, indicating he wanted to go inside. Lawrence went inside with him, and Bow took him straight to the glass and spelled: "I want to play with my ball."

"Do you want to play with your ball outside?" Lawrence asked.

"Yes," Bow spelled. "Outside."

Lawrence brought the brown basketball for Bow to play with outside. We're not sure what made Bow think of his ball just then. This is an unusual incident, because usually when Bow is outside he enjoys playing with what is there, and he never takes someone back in just to ask for another toy.

Bow's New Bench

Yesterday was Sword's birthday, and I spent the day with her, and Lawrence stayed with Bow. While I was out, Bow got a present, too. His new outdoor bench was installed.

In the outer pens, ever since the pen system was erected, we had a black metal glider, on which Bow, and whoever was with him, used to sit and swing. The glider was originally intended to be part of the furniture at Orchard House, before there even was a pen system.

 Bow liked the glider, but he also enjoyed trying to take it apart and damage it. Bow's enjoyment of all objects is essentially destructive. He's the kind of consumer who longs to consume the product in its entirety, until nothing is left. As far as Bow is concerned, a product left unconsumed is a product not fully used.

Little by little, parts of the glider began to drop off. A decorative pattern welded onto the back rest, shaped like flowers, was broken off and might have been used as a knife, had it not been confiscated. The lower grill, which is part of the seat, was chewed on until part of it jutted up, and I ended up with a hole in the bottom of my pants every time I sat there. I had to take a towel with me to sit there, and Bow resented the towels and wanted to bite them. One day the frame of the glider broke. That was about three weeks ago.

I set out in search of a metal bench to replace the glider. I realized that moving parts were just an invitation for destructive behavior, so I wanted something simple: a welded metal bench as strong as the pen itself. I thought I had seen such a thing at the local feed store, but my memory was from last year. This year all they had were benches that came in flat boxes and had to be put together with bolts. Anything we could put together Bow could easily take apart. The Do It Center had nothing better. Everything available was mass produced and arrived dissassembled.

I began to search the flea markets, hoping to find a sturdy bench produced before the industrial age. In front of one flea market, I saw a bench that looked just right. It was all metal, welded together, painted black, with a backplate with a floral design, and it looked like something no one could take apart. I tried to lift it, to see how heavy it was, and then I realized it was bolted to the cement in front of the store. It wasn't for sale. It belonged to the city. That's when I noticed that this city had such benches every block or so, all up and down its main street.

I stopped by at the city hall to ask who had made the benches. They directed me to the local florist's shop, where the welder's name and phone number were divulged to me. And that's how I came to order Bow his own made-to-order bench, which was delivered yesterday, and bolted to the cement of his outer pen. It's supposed to be indestructible, but if this proves to be an exaggeration, I will know where to go for repairs.

The welder is a kind man who understood Bow's need to fiddle with things and make them move, so he added, at no extra charge, some nonfunctional moving parts, metal nuts that ate like a baby's beads on a stroller or high chair. You can move them up and down, and nothing happens.

Bow watched the work proceed from indoors, and when he was finally allowed access to the bench, he threw himself at it, trying every which way to dislodge it, but to no avail. He then proceeded to use it for a series of gymnastic maneuvers. Later, when Lawrence asked him what he thought of his new bench, Bow spelled: "I like it."