The Poultry Princess: Close Call With A Chicken Feeder

This week’s Saturday Smile is brought to you by guest contributor Heide Royer. This is the 16th installment in her series of humorous stories about chicken keeping.

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” Quote from the movie “The Help”.

I believe that everyone on this planet has those three qualities until something shifts in their life that causes them not to. I also believe that people have the ability to contribute to society some skill, talent, or ideology that can benefit others and help propel us into a better future. Then again, some people turn out to be total pieces of shi+ and I will probably end up falling madly in love with them. That’s how I like to eat my relationship egg rolls. Toxic dipped in narcissistic yum yum sauce. Present egg roll excluded of course.

Back to the chicken related story, although I did use the word egg, so that has to count for something. Nudge, nudge.

I consider myself to be quite creative and inventive. I will look at an item and completely repurpose it for something that it wasn’t made for. I think a lot of chicken people do this for their birds. Cubbies for shoes? Chicken nesting boxes. Playpen for babies? Brooder for baby chicks. Old Armoire? Mini coop. Retired school bus? Major coop or place to send man when they mess up and forget your birthday. Easy, right?

So when my boyfriend said he was going to bring his deer feeder home, I had an epiphany. I wonder if the deer feeder could be used to feed my birds? Surely it could. The concept is totally the same, minus the fattening them up to shoot them down from a deer blind. Plus, it would save me so much time in the process. And time is money. Yes, girl. The birds are going to love it! You is kind.

And lo and behold after placing the feeder out into the pasture, loading it with four bags of All Flock crumbles and setting the timer to go off twice a day, we were in business. My idea was going to work after all. You is smart.

7 a.m and 5 p.m. Those were the two times it was set to go off and when it does, it spins a copious amount of feed on the ground like drunken college boys throwing orange and yellow beads at well-endowed girls during Mardi Gras. I’m amazed at how this little plate whips and spins around reminding me of a metal whirling dervish, gracefully distributing crumbles both near and far for the birds to consume.

Then we had the fall daylight savings change and I ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tell me again why we have that? It only shifts the whole world off balance and sends us spiraling into waves of lack of sleep, confusion, bad coffee and grouchiness. Grrr.

You will be happy to know that I remained upright for this particular story, which is quite unusual given the dumb cluckery that happens to me on the daily.

The evening hour was approaching and I thought I would have one last mingle with my birds before they ate and got put up for the night. I glanced over and saw no one was doing their mad peckage on the ground or foraging for their last nightly morsel so I walked over to the feeder to make sure it wasn’t jammed or that it hadn’t run out of crumbles.

I got right underneath it to troubleshoot when I heard, “Whizzzz.” Then again, but faster. “Whizzzzzz.” Then it was went from Heide’s Happy Farm to a scene from Full Metal Jacket where I was thrust into the dense jungle of South Vietnam surrounded by angry insurgents shooting at me with corn, wheat, pea and oat filled projectiles.

Now my Daddy, who is a proud Marine, didn’t raise no punk, so I knew I had to dig deep into my overseas military upbringing, schooling and years of training to prepare for the fight of my life. And I hauled a$$. Sorry, Daddy. I’m too important to perish this way!

As I was running I could feel the feed shrapnel searing into the back of my head, shoulders, knees and toes. (it’s ok to sing that). I even felt it pelt the back of my legs through my jeans. Who wears jeans from Cato Fashions anyways to do chicken chores? This girl.

Here’s the problem with those jeans. Where it makes you appear that you can bounce a roll of quarters off your butt, it also can give you a wee bit of plumbers crack and in the process of fleeing the scene, I also somehow managed to get a fairly decent amount deposited right into my happy booty split.

After I felt comfortable enough that I was out of reach from my metallic sniper, I walked into the house slowly, feeling, and I’m sure sounding, like a human rice krispie treat, snap, crackle and popping my way to the bathroom so I could shower and change clothes. It took me a bit longer to get to the bedroom because my puppy was going crazy for my new feed store snacks and had his nose jammed into my butt as I was trying to walk.

Today, I leave you with a clear heart and clean bum and to tell you again,

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”

Important enough to get the h€ll out of the way of flying feed bullets, smart enough to set reminders on your calendar when the time changes, and kind enough to finish this long story of mine with a smile.

Heide Royer is the artist behind Heidinmyworld of Art. Her creative passion lies within the animal world and is expressed through her visually compelling artwork. She is also an aspiring writer telling stories of her chicken farm life in a new book entitled “All Cooped Up – My Life with Chickens During A Pandemic”, filled with crazy antics and a lot of fowl play. It’s sure to bring laughter to any poultry loving household.

Thanks again to Heide for sharing her story and photos, used with permission.