Nothing in Particular

Shoes don't usually figure largely in my life. I have a pair of frocs (faux Crocs), a pair of sneakers, winter boots and rubber boots. The frocs and sneakers live in the mudroom. The boots live in the garage. So when I went to put on my sneakers one rainy day last week, I was mystified when they were nowhere to be found. I hunted all over the mudroom, all over the house and even out on the deck, but they weren't there. (I did find a saucepan, a dish towel and a salt shaker that I've been looking for, but no shoes.) I finally gave up and wore my Frocs, which meant that my feet got wet immediately and stayed that way all day.

I was headed out to pick up my kids at camp, which is a nice drive through a little town and then onto winding country roads. With If You Ain't Got the Do-Re-Mi in the cd player and a smile on my lips, I tooled along, humming and enjoying the scenery in spite of the rain. That's when I saw the sign. It was yellow and looked like a regular "caution" sign. But it said, "Caution. Blind Chicken."

Well, I didn't really know what to do about the blind chicken. Assuming it wasn't deaf, wouldn't it hear the car and stay out of the road? But then I thought about the chickens I've known over my lifetime and realized that even sighted chickens aren't too reliable when it comes to cars. That's when I saw the flock of chickens. There were six or eight of them, pecking around right at the edge of the road. So, I wondered, which one is the blind one? And how do I tell?

They all looked at me with that crazy, yellow-eyed, bugga-bugga look that chickens have, like they're one anger management class away from blowin' up the joint. None of them looked blind, but they all looked fully capable of running in front of me. So I slowed way down, after looking in my rearview mirror to make sure no one was behind me, and drove past them very carefully. Than I started wondering.

What if there is no blind chicken? What if the chicken farmer just put up that sign to make people slow down so they wouldn't run over his stupid chickens. "Yah!" I thought as I got more and more worked up. "None of those chickens looked blind to me. Boy did I just get scammed! And I even slowed down and everything." Then I thought about that whole thought process and realized that I was really missing the whole point, which is: What kind of wacko would put up a "Caution. Blind Chicken Sign." in the first place?

While I was mulling that over, I passed a house where there's a corn stand in the summer. A woman runs it. She wears one of those white kerchief type headcoverings, a long blue jumper and a white long-sleeved shirt. And a raccoon mask. Honest. I am not making this up. I don't know if she belongs to a cult of corn-worshippers showing their reverence by wearing the masks because raccoons love corn too or what.

I've never stopped for corn there, but I'm going to one of these days, just to see if she says anything about the raccoon mask. And while I'm at it, I can ask her about the blind chicken. After all, it's her neighbor. If I had a blind chicken for a neighbor, I'd know about it. I don't, by the way. One of my neighbors has an almost deaf Black Lab, but no blind chickens.

Now, you have to remember that I live in Maine, not New Zealand for this next piece of information. Right next to someone's mailbox, I saw a kiwi pecking at a plant. Long beak. Roundish body. Looked just like the one on the shoe polish can. I know, I know, there are no kiwis in Maine, but what if one got blown off course? That's what I told my kids when I got to camp, when they told me I couldn't have seen a kiwi.

My daughter even got out the bird book when we got home and told me that it was a Thrasher. A Thrasher! Who is she going to believe? The bird book or the shoe polish can? Me, I believe that it was a kiwi that got blown off course and landed in Maine. It's probably wondering how the heck it got here and where all the sheep are. My daughter also solved my missing shoe mystery. They were on the floor in the backseat, where she'd left them when she wore them out to the car to get to her sneakers, which she'd left in the car the day before. Sometimes, life makes less sense to me than a road sign does to a blind chicken.

Subscribe to receive posts
by email.

Enter your Email





Preview | Powered by FeedBlitz