Bantam Chickens
A Summer Day A Long Time Ago
(This story is about farm animals and my experiences as a small boy growing up on a working farm, my intention here is not to be deeply philosophical). My grandmother was friends with an older farm couple, who had no children. My family visited these folks quite frequently. Their names were Oliver and Della. They loved children and we were always welcomed and treated kindly by both of them. They had chickens, we had chickens, everybody at that time had chickens! I was out in their yard and I noticed some small chickens that were not chicks, as they looked exactly like the adult chickens except a lot smaller. I asked Oliver why they were so small, he said because they are Banty chickens! I asked what was a Banty he said that they were a type of chicken that just did not grow as large as the regular chickens; otherwise they were just the same. He asked if I wanted to see some Banty eggs. We went into the hen house and he showed me these little eggs. This started my 4-5 year old brain to thinking!! I am a little boy and these are little chickens. Not sure how the transaction took place but Oliver said if it was OK with my mom, I could have some Banty Chickens, some hens and maybe even a Banty Rooster!! My mom must have said OK, because Oliver got out an old burlap bag (when I was a kid these things were everywhere) and went in the chicken yard and came back with the bag filled with Bandy’s. I think that there were 5 or 6 mostly hens with maybe 1 rooster. The bag was placed unceremoniously in the trunk of our car and we were off for home. When we arrived home, I got the bag and let the Bandy’s out. They seemed to adapt quite well, doing chicken things and fitting in with no problems. I was proud to have my own kid-sized chickens that laid kid sized eggs that you could actually eat! Time must have passed without incident. Somewhere I had seen ducks, maybe at the lake. I did not realize that ducks were different then chickens. What I did notice was that ducks swum in the water (like taking a bath) so they must be clean chickens. As my mom had told me that bathing was very good thing as it was good for your health and made you look well groomed, which meant clean and good to look at. So I thought, clean was good, dirty was bad. I guess that I only had eyes for the Bandy’s, because I noticed that they did not bathe, never mind the other chickens. So this made me concerned because these were my chickens, and they should be clean. We also had 2 or 3 old milk cows out in the barnyard. I think everybody had a couple of cows for milk, (and in the old days butter and cheese). The cows drank out of what my dad called the “horse tank”, never mind that we did not have any horses. The tank was a large metal tub that my father filled each day with a pipe that went to our well. I think he always kept the water level about a ½ foot below the rim. I decided that the Bandy’s needed a bath. So I rounded up the chickens and put them in the horse tank. I watched for a while, they looked like they were having fun, splashing around. Then something distracted me, I cannot remember what, but I wandered away. Sometime later, I remembered to the Bantams, and figured that they should be clean by then. I came back to the tank but the Banty chicks were no longer splashing and having fun!! So I took one out, she looked like she was asleep, so I put her down, I figured, that after my bath, I would go to sleep, so Bandy’s must do the same. But this was in the middle of day and not at night. I took out some of the other chickens and they were asleep too. So I took them all out and laid then on the grass, wake up, Bandy’s, wake up!! But they would not wake up? At this point, I started to feel strange, kind of scared. I thought maybe my mother would be mad at me for doing something wrong. But my growing alarm was deeper than just fear that I might be scolded, as I know I was thinking that maybe I had hurt the Banty chicks, somehow! I could not figure it out, they were asleep, and would not move, no matter what I did. Something bad had happened to the Banty hens, something real bad. I started to cry, as I was afraid, worried what my mom would say and sad if I had hurt the Bantys. I did not intend on hurting them, actually I just wanted them to look nice and clean, which was a good thing, but something bad had happened. They were somehow broken! I had had toys that had broke, an old trike that could not be fixed and was thrown out. But I knew that a trike was not alive and a chicken was, there was a difference, I could just feel it! Moreover, I had broken the Banty. I cried and was afraid and for some reason thought that I could somehow run away from this problem. That if I ran far away, they would no longer be broken, so I started running across the field. As I was still quite young and all of this probably happened much more quickly then I remember, my mom came out of the house and saw me running out into the field. She yelled for me to come back and what was the matter? But even before I heard my mom, I realized that I could not just run away from the problem, it just was not going to help. So I yelled at my mom and stated walking back and she met me half way. She of course wanted to know why I was crying and what happened. I was no longer afraid that she would scold me, as this was a bigger problem than just doing something wrong, I wanted her to fix the Banty’s, I hoped she could. I told her what had happened and took her to the tank where I found the Banty’s in the exact same place as when I left them. What was wrong with the Banty’s? Why were they not moving? All mom said was that Banty’s were not supposed to swim. She of course hugged and comforted me but that was the only explanation she gave me. She said let’s go in the house; I wanted to know what would happen to the Bantys. She said your father will take care of them when he returns from working in the fields. I think I went in and had some bread and milk, which was the universal comfort food in my family. My father finally came back from the fields, my mom met him outside, they talked and he left for a while then returned. I asked my father what had happened to the Bantys, he said the same thing as my mother, that they were not supposed to swim. I do not know, it has been so long, I think that I was encouraged to drop the matter. The next day, I went out to the barnyard but the Bantys were gone. All I knew was they were not supposed to swim, they were broken and now they were gone. I think I must have asked if they would come back, and the answer must have been, no they will not come back. The point of this story is that sometimes animals can be broken, and that if they are broken really bad, they will be gone and will not come back. I did not understand how this could happen. On that summer day long ago, I had stumbled on one of the great questions of life! (Tom’s Fables)
