On Franklin Hill Farm: Miss Bossy

By Bettina Sperry

[Editor’s Note: This column marks Bettina Sperry’s return to the staff after a few years’ time-out. Let’s all welcome her back!]

Recently, I spent a few days watching one of my new chickens clearly thinking herself a Queen Bee. She gets herself into everyone’s business. She’s got an attitude. She is bossy. She is sure of herself and tells the other chickens what to do. She is a bully as she huffs and puffs her way around the chicken yard. Best of all, she does not think, nor understand, nor does she look behind her, but most importantly, she doesn’t look ahead of herself either.

    While she is out squawking and running from feed bowl to feed bowl, her own feed bowl is running dry and she ends up with next to nothing except a lot of heartache as she turns to her own bowl of food and finds it empty – because, inevitably, one or more chickens outsmart her. With her neck stretched long and thin into the farm lives of others, she is biblically defined as a meddler, a simple babbler, a gossiper, and a busybody.
    Two new lambs were introduced to the pasture, and to no surprise, Miss Bossy scurried back to her flock. That flock is needed for support and protection, because it is ridiculously difficult for one chicken to amount to even a scoundrel in the face of scavengers and predators. She is a chicken, and chicken is food for just about everyone, including food for thought. Miss Bossy found herself understanding life a little differently. That long stretched-out chicken neck has recently shrunk considerably.

    Thirteen chickens live in a fenced pasture that was built years back, at minimum a quarter acre. That is a lot of pasture for just a few chickens. Because the grass is always greener elsewhere, they jump the fence and head for the acreage around the house, make themselves free-range chickens and get into everything and everyone’s business. When I brought two pigs home, they stood in front of the individual pig pens and looked to the right then to the left, then to the right, then to the left again. Back and forth they went looking at the pigs and making them their business.
    The grass is always greener elsewhere. That green grass. The greener grass, the greener, thicker, taller grass that rests beneath the feet of some folk, albeit just yards away – it just smells so much sweeter and so full of lust for life. A cause for nosiness, noisiness, turmoil, drama, and a sinkhole for the unhappy who peer over the hill, over the fence, over the field – or just a few yards away – sure that what is over there must be better, more fulfilling, more interesting, more life satisfying. Without greener grass elsewhere, wherever would some critters indulge their undisciplined meddlesome minds?

Copyright © 2022 by Bettina Sperry