THE USUAL NOTE FROM LB: From the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2010, Gwen the Beautiful and I were the proud and often exhausted owners of a beautiful Ozarks property we called Cloud Creek Ranch.
In many ways, the ranch was paradise. But it was a paradise with a price that started going up before we even knew it existed. Here’s another Monday musing about our adventure and the lessons we learned.
Oh, and if y’all detect any irony, please believe me when I say it comes straight from the universe and not your kindly Uncle Larry B.
by Larry Brody
McNugget the banty rooster, one of the honorable survivors of Hurricane Ike’s sneak attack on our hen house, vanished yesterday.
As in, he wasn’t here on the property we call Cloud Creek Ranch when I woke up in the morning, and didn’t show up all day.
I couldn’t find him in the chicken yard. Or in the wreckage of the hen house. And he didn’t come when I sang my magic song (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik done as chicken squawking) and walked through the yard tossing bread everywhere.
And if McNugget had been there he definitely would’ve come running. Mozart’s classic music and three slices of white bread are absolutely irresistible to the Cloud Creek chickens. No matter what they’re up to, the chance to gobble down a snack and listen to me make a fool of myself always comes first.
McNugget’s disappearance saddened me greatly. We’ve been through a lot together. He’s one of only two of the original chickens remaining from those that came with the ranch when we moved in over six years ago. About three years after we arrived, the feisty little guy got out of the yard somehow and Emmy the Bold worked him over pretty well. She was just playing, but when I snatched him away from her he was a bloody, featherless mess.
As I’ve written before, I brought McNugget into the hen house and the biddy hen who ran everything then (think “Brood Mom”) came running over, wrapping her wings around him like loving arms and crooning to him.
She held McNugget for days in the most devoted manner I’ve ever seen from any genus or species (not necessarily excluding human beings), and he recovered and became stronger and better than ever.
In fact, he replaced a rooster more than twice his size as Numero Uno in the yard.
So I moped around all day yesterday, hating the idea that he was gone. Certain that the storm belatedly had done McNugget in.
For reasons including my own ineptitude and the fact that all the handymen and tree services in Paradises are too busy to even say no, the big tree that slammed into the hen house is still there, and I figured he’d used it as a springboard for fluttering out to where Emmy or one of our other dogs, or some wild critter, had gotten to him.
I went to bed as depressed as I would’ve been if any house pet had vanished into the night.
But this morning, when I went out to greet The Mountain, there stood McNugget amid the current brood. Hanging tightly, as usual, with the other remaining original inhabitant, a fat yellow hen Youngest Daughter Amber named—what else?—Lemon Chicken.
Joyfully, I ran inside and got some bread. Took it into the chicken yard where I sang and threw it around. Usually, McNugget checks out each piece as I toss it and then drops it, demonstrating his leadership by waiting for everyone else to eat before he gets to serious pecking. Today, though, he was the first one to come to me, and he gobbled down everything as though starving.
To me, this was proof that he’d been somewhere other than the chicken yard the day before. But where? If he’d gone into the clearing or the woods he’d never have made it back. No chicken ever has.
Which means—
Well, in the reality I call Paradise, not even the sky’s the limit when it comes to figuring out what it means. Animals and things often disappear and reappear willy-nilly. Gwen the Beautiful, almost all of the Cloud Creek guests, visitors, and students who’ve spent at least one night here, and I have seen Huck the Spotless Appaloosa and His Gal Rosie vanish from the corral in the night and then materialize in the mist the next morning.
The way I’m looking at it, if the horses can amble off to frolic in dimensions unknown and then return to our little corner, who’s to say a brave-hearted little rooster can’t do the same?
About a month ago, I wrote about my concern that the magic I’ve experienced was false. Or, worse, dead. Now I suspect otherwise.
Tonight I’m going to gaze skyward in search of my most prized magical friends, the dancing stars. And if I see one, I’ll believe it.
I’ve got to.
Because magic’s what makes life sing.
And I’ll bet Mozart would’ve agreed.
