So Mohawk, Pipsqueak and Silver spent their chickhood in the artist’s studio. It was secure. It was warm. And it soon smelled, unfortunately, like a real coop. Over the spring, they graduated from a red, rinky-dink cardboard corral to a big metal horse trough. Silver was the most tame, followed by Mohawk. Pipsqueak was the littlest chicken and a skittish spaz– constantly freaking out that the sky was falling. Though the spastic was vanquished the night a box toppled into the enclosure, causing a real panic that some sneaky predator had broken into the hen studio.
Meanwhile, the boys are fortunately growing-up in an age where we all continue to learn about, appreciate, and celebrate our differences. We’re lucky the boys have a friend at school who is transgender. Sometimes they’re a girl, and sometimes they’re a boy. They’ve always felt that way. It’s no big deal. This past year, we also had an awareness presentation at work that taught us about pronouns. I learned a lot. There was a whole slide of vocab I wasn’t familiar with. I learned about cisgenders, and that some people prefer the pronouns them and theirs.
Back at the farm, Silver started jumping up to the edge of the horse trough. Presumably to get a better view. And we had to take the wire enclosure we had and fashion a chick lid for the chicklettes. At some point we decided the little girls were ready to move in with the big girls, and our two flocks… became two.
The big girls were entirely freaked out. We’d look out in the evening and it was like a gang of orphans had taken over their house. The little chicks called dibs on the coop and the big girls would stay outside till dark. We could see the little chick silhouettes flapping and hopping from bunkbed to bunkbed. At some point, the big girls would reluctantly walk the plank into the crazy slumber party that was their previous childfree poultry mansion.
And the little girls got bigger and bigger. And we started to suspect that Silver was a he, not a she. She grew tail feathers. And a comb. And she started cock-a-doodle-doing at 4:30 in the morning. And all our pronoun training was tested.
She was a he. Or a they.