The Poultry Princess: The Fuckening

This is the sixth installment from guest contributor, Heide Royer. If you’ve read her previous posts you’ll be familiar with some recurring themes: namely chicken poop, her body parts and self-deprecating humour peppered with lots of cussing. I might be a ‘polite’ Canadian to Heide’s larger-than-life Texan but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate her stories and hope you will too.

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“When triple rise the burning sun, the pasture fills with crazed bun buns. Behold at last, oh frightened ones. The mighty fu€kening has begun.” – Confu€kus

You know that saying about stars aligning? But what happens when they don’t align? Like do they just decide to peace out and plummet to the earth like a celestial child dropping a burned out sparkler on the Fourth of July? Madness. Chaos and madness. That’s what happens. Since Chadness doesn’t quite work as a word (well, it kind of does since my ex-husband’s name was Chad and he was a colossal chode, so it fits really) I will refer to this utmost state of horrificness as “The Fu€kening.”

It was a normal Sunday afternoon working on the farm. I completed the majority of chores early in the morning since I knew it was going to be hotter than a goat’s a$$ in a pepper patch that day. My partner, Travis, had been sick for weeks and so a lot of the responsibilities as of late have fallen to me. I’m adding his sickness into this ‘state’, as well since it comes into play. By the end of the day, instead of jumping into the shower to wash all the stank off and diving into a bottle of $8 gas station Cabernet, I opted to use our pool for the first time this year.

It’s been a battle with the crazy, ever changing Texas weather to get it to where it doesn’t look like green goose shit. Why couldn’t we as humans just keep things simple and maintain pools like mini ponds and just put things in there to keep the skeeters away? No. We have to have chemicals, chlorine, a biochemical engineering degree, tubes, beakers and mermaid nectar to get the pool to be the most crystal clear blue we can possibly make it. Sunday was the day I could see both my hands in the water and the bottom so I knew I was going in sometime soon.

I shuffled through my dresser drawers and found one of at least twenty bathing suits I own. Eighteen and a half of them are probably not swim worthy or suitable for the average bear’s eyes, including my own, since they were purchased over a span of 15 years and mama’s waist and bustline ain’t quite the same as it used to be. Yes, yes, this cute, hot pink bikini though. This one works. Gonna look like a sexy snack. Since I knew my son Addison wasn’t going to join me, I didn’t have to wear a coverall or t-shirt. I could just let what the good Lord and Dr. Kasden gave me, hang all the way out while I relaxed and floated my day’s stresses away.

Travis offered to come sit with me while I swam (hmmm, wonder why?). He sat and played some music on his portable speaker and I swam and floated around trying to look cute and whimsical. By whimsical, I actually mean not looking like I was battling off imaginary Nile crocodiles while trying to get on the pink flamingo float. The cool thing about our pool is that it overlooks the pasture, so I have a clear visual of everyone’s enclosures. Turkeys were good. Chickens looked happy. Geese and ducks were content swimming in the water and the bunnies were having a blast running freely outside playing around the barn.

Wait, what?! Bunnies are never supposed to be out of their fenced area so this was a problem indeed. I immediately yelled “Oh shi+!”, and started swimming madly towards the pool ladder to hoist myself up and out.

Travis, not having any idea what was going on, was freaking out with me, thinking that by my reaction a rare albino Texas elephant must be giving birth in our hay stall and clearly it was a breech baby that needed my assistance. I knew he couldn’t help me in this search and rescue event since he barely has the energy to walk 50 paces, much less haul a$$ an acre away, but I did hear him ask me if I needed him to get Addison to help, to which I quickly replied, ‘yes’!

As much as I would like to say the next scene was beautiful and picturesque, like a tanned Baywatch beauty running along the white sands of Malibu to rescue her drowning cousin visiting from Hungary, it was more like a X-rated version of Free Willy. If the flapping of breasts hitting your chest wall and your butt cheeks slapping against the backs of your thighs enabled you to take flight, baby I would have been soaring into the stratosphere like a hot pink, half Puerto Rican eagle. Instead, I sounded like a pregnant California seal lion flapping it flippers alerting predators to stay far, far away.

I had no time to focus on the cacophony of my body parts because my babies were in danger of hopping off into oblivion or even worse, a dog’s jaws. I finally got to them and had to slow my pace up so they wouldn’t flip their cute, furry lids and take off in the wrong direction. Oh good, only five escaped that I could see. Three babies and two adults. Out of 24, that’s not bad. I bent down slowly to pick up one of the black bunny babies with the white spotted nose, when I felt a tug behind me. I turned instinctively to see my turkey hen, HB, behind me, pulling the hanging strings of my bathing suit with her beak followed by the sensation of a falling bikini top.

What in the “I did not give consent to be in a poultry porn” kind of tomfoolery is this? But that wasn’t the worst of it. As I turned to confront my assailant, I locked eyes with my sixteen year old who was walking to help me about 30 yards away. Ah yes, I’ve heard this day was coming. It’s been chicken scratched on Ancient Greek walls for centuries. The Fu€kening is upon me. This is the day of no return. This very topless act is being seared as a new, large, painful wrinkle in both of our brains. I feel badly now that I have to leave my homestead never to lay eyes upon my child or loved ones again. I covered my boobs quickly with my hands (this is where I wish I had Mickey Mouse hands, which could have avoided so much trauma) and watched as HB tried to ingest my bikini top strings like some sort of yum-yum pink wormy snack.

The other hens were alerted to her new prize and the chase was on. Luckily I was able to grab it from her before it became a free for all once I saw that Addison was out of sight and I could move my mitts from my chest. As quickly as he made his way down the pasture to help me, he double timed his turnaround to go back home into the safe confines of his room, probably scratching his eyes out and researching at what age you can legally buy a bottle of Jim Beam, all the while leaving me there standing, clutching the remaining fabric of my bikini and dignity.

I debated about putting a brown feed bag over my body to finish up what I had set out to do, but the damage was already done and there wasn’t much time left to get everyone back into their enclosure safely. So I strapped my bikini top back on, wrangled my escapees and headed back to the house to pack my bags and shop for a one piece. Sigh, I should have been an astrologer.

Love and quiches to all and to all a good night.