Creating Chaos

"We might be setting off a chain reaction of chaos," M. says with a definite sparkle in his eye, "but we're going to do it anyway."

I roll up my sleeves and set my gaze past the shade cloth cover, past the wood slatted fence laced with rusting wire, past the piles of pecked zucchini and sprouts. My opponents mill about in their pens unaware of the pending pandemonium.

"OK Chickens," I say with a smile as my fellow intern and I peel back the cloth entrance-way and step into the Saipans' domain, "here we come!"

A burst of emerald green and desert-clay-orange flashes across the pen as the roosters high tail it to the back area. The toddler chickens (not chicks anymore but not fully grown) follow the elders behind the roost. B. circles around the nailed-together pallets in an attempt to scare the flock into my path. All of the sudden six sets of wings and claws flap and squawk and fly towards me. What is my reaction? Flailing of my own arms and legs of course in an effort to grasp one of the feathery bodies now well beyond my reach. And laughing. Lots and lots of laughing.

Chickens are fast. Really fast.

By this time I am running down the length of the coop laughing and yelling and smiling as only chicken catching can make me smile. Here we are, a bunch of grown adults, chasing after birds, falling down after botched grabs, sneaking up like little kids to the Christmas tree thinking no one will notice. Only these winged colorfully wrapped little packages notice. And flee.

I am out of breath but I finally have a (very upset, very loud) chicken under my arm. I try that old trick of putting your hand over their eyes to calm them down but the hen is just not falling for it. Little does she know that, like the Jeffersons, she is moving on up. She is going to be free ranging in the planting beds full of wild arugula and mustard and purslane and lambs quarters. A feast! She comes around, gets excited even, when I place her inside the mesh fence and she realizes she is not bound for chicken nuggetdom today.

I brush off my shirt and head over to the duck pen where Intern M. has a flapping duck at arms length. It takes me a moment to figure out what is happening. He is cursing, the duck is cursing, and shit is coursing down the length of his jeans. Not poop in neat little blueberry-like goat packages, but stinky, runny, projectiled duck shit. All over.
I am doubled up laughing and don't stop until well after I am crying and gasping for air. Maybe it's because I'm hanging out with 6th graders on their fieldtrips to the farm and all we do is talk about poop and worms, but I think shit is funny. And I'm thankful for this youthful mentality.

When I'm on the farm I feel like a kid and I have the chickens and ducks and grubs and dirt and lettuce and lemon verbena to thank for it.

When is the last time you chased pigeons in the park? Or a squirrel up a tree? Or played in the dirt with grubs and earthworms and rolly polly bugs crawling around your palm? When did you last lie on your back in the grass and look up into the sky and make dragons out of puffed up ice crystals? When did you last take a leaf off something growing in the dirt and unhesitatingly pop it into your mouth, not worrying about pesticides or germs or pollutants or all that other stuff we're supposed to be worried about? When did you last just stop, breathe in, and laugh out as loud as you could?

Because here on the farm, there is no such thing as an "inside voice" unless you're talking about the one that whispers from the depths of your being, "This is exactly where you need to be right now. Laugh. Play in the dirt. Chase chickens. Create chaos. Enjoy."