Mother Hen

Mother’s Day was gone and forgotten when my apprentice, Hannah, and I heard peeps emanating from the wool bag.

This bag of wool is left over from a different era.

Years ago, after sheep shearers clipped the wool, someone tossed the fleece up into this bag that hangs 8 feet high.

Someone else – usually a child – would stomp the wool tightly into the bag. The only way out of the deep hole was to fill the bag with wool until the child could climb over the rim and down the ladder.

Between fleeces landing on the child’s head and the knowledge that a drink of water was waiting at the bottom of the ladder, motivation to pack fleeces quickly was high.

The bag that hangs from the 8-foot rack in my barn is now partially filled with only a few fleeces.

Baby chicks are not effective fleece packers.

But they get thirsty with all that peeping.

I climbed the ladder and peeked over the edge of the rack to assess the situation.

A hen’s beady eye glared at me from 4 feet below the rim.

She squatted with her wings spread slightly, the classic position of a hen protecting her chicks.

With my toes gripping the rung of the ladder, my arms were too short to reach the hen.

My head was her closest target.

She took aim at my eyeballs.

I backed away, ready to reassess the situation from the safety of the ground.

The chicks would die if we didn’t lift them out of the bag.

I would go blind if the hen found her target.

Hannah needed her eyesight, too, so I decided to forgo providing a new learning experience for her.

Our plan developed into a distract-and-kidnap strategy.

I found a long stick that I hoped would motivate the hen to fly out of the bag so I could grab four chicks and hand them to Hannah.

Hannah would set the chicks in the vicinity of the hen, yet out of eye-pecking range.

I lowered the stick into the bag.

The hen triple-pecked it.

I ruffled her feathers and harassed her.

She squawked fiercely and flew into my face.

I dodged.

Hannah screamed.

The hen landed in the bag and gathered her chicks.

I tried again, my stick hen-pecked, but holding up.

The hen defended her homeland with might and tenacity.

Finally, she flew out straight into my face, taking a strike as she jumped to the ground.

I grabbed the chicks and handed them to Hannah in the midst of a squawking, flying, pecking hen.

Hannah set the chicks down together.

The hen managed to squawk at us while simultaneously purring to her chicks.

Then she herded them to safety in a lambing pen.

That particular pen was full of muck from a sheep family that visited the night before.

Another ewe with newborn lambs was waiting to move into that pen.

I grabbed a pitchfork to scoop out the old muck and lay down new straw.

The hen attacked the pitchfork.

Hannah and I laughed.

Then the hen spotted my eyes.

I had no idea a hen could fly head-high.

I dodged the hen and she herded her chicks to a safer spot, near the water spigot.

New sheep families need a bucket of water in their pen.

By now, the hen was either a seasoned veteran of war or a 4H mother.

She saw me coming and launched an offensive.

This mother hen will never receive flowers or a nice dinner at a restaurant for Mother’s Day, but I nominate her for Mother of the Year.

I hope I become a mother like her someday.