iowa

I never thought of my parents as hippies perse'. Despite my mother dressing us in traditional Native American garb the previous two years. It seemed normal enough.

It was the summer of 1978(maybe 77'). My parents decided to become self-sufficient. Anything we were to eat; we were to raise.

We had six acres of sweet corn. This eventually would lead to us spending weekend mornings and afternoons in the back of a pickup on some desperate corner.

We also had two acres of vegetables. My younger sister, Carla, was put in charge of weeding. She quickly ascertained that if she pulled the actual plants instead of the weeds the task would be taken away. I soon found myself in charge of weeding.

My father also decided to raise 50 roasting hens. I was to take care of the chicks. Feeding and watering them before and after school. I guess the chickens seemed a perfect fit for me. In kindergarten I had a pet black rooster named Calamari. I would take him for walks on a leash. A raccoon ate him.

The chicks arrived and found there place in the ramshackle barn they were going to grow up in until the inevitable. The first two weeks went by smoothly enough. The third week I noticed that when I came back in the afternoon the food hadn't been touched. This continued for a few more days. Chicks started dieing. 30 left. 22. And then finally 12. I was hand feeding them by now. Little eye droppers of food mixed into a paste with water. I became nervous that I was going to have to say something to my dad. I was responsible. I didn't want to let him down. The next three days wore me down to the point I knew I had to tell him. He came out to the barn with me and started picking up the chicks. He was startled, at first, noting that the chicks didn't even try to escape as he came near them. And then he turned a chick over and noticed it had no legs. And then another. I, of course, knew this already. And more until the number was 12 and the legs were zero.

My father pondered this for a few days. Talked to the neighbors. The final conclusion was that rats had crawled through the knots in the wood and snapped the legs off the chicks. So quickly the resting chicks wouldn't even know it. So cleanly that the leftover stumps would barely bleed. Then the chick would wake up hungry and find no momentum. And then starvation.

That was the end of my parent's experiment.