A Funny Chicken Story
By Mary Breault

It seemed like an innocent enough request; would you raise a few pheasants until they’re a couple months old and then let them go?  As Police Chief in our small town, and a member of the gun club that was doing the asking, my husband, David, cheerfully agreed.

David grew up with animals… lots and lots of animals.  His mother raised rabbits for pet stores, along with guinea pigs, snakes, rats, and a host of other animals that make me shiver

each time I think of it.

I was not raised on a farm.  I had a dog once, but had to give him away when we moved to our new home in Anoka.  I was four years old. 

When David came home and told me he agreed to take 25 baby pheasants, (yes, that’s right, 25!) I was a bit hesitant.  David has a tendency to go a little overboard sometimes. 

Like when he quit smoking in 1992, he decided to take the money he was spending on cigarettes and buy flashlights.  Over that summer he purchased 30 Mag Lite flashlights!  One in every size Mag Lite makes.  I had to stop him when he purchased everything in black and wanted to buy all new flashlights in blue.

Or the time he decided he liked clocks.  We now have a clock on every wall of the house.  No, not in every room… on every wall!

I had to put my foot down when he came home one day saying he wanted a tattoo.  I was convinced he’d be covered from head to foot.  Absolutely no tattoos!

“We need to build a coop and a run for the pheasants… don’t want predators to get them!”  he said. 

No problem!  On a trip to Menards we purchased everything we’d need; a few 2 x 2’s, some cheap scrap boards and chicken wire. 

Okay, I admit it, putting the coop together was kind of fun.  A family affair.  Terry, 15 and Annie, 14 eagerly helped throughout the summer feeding, watering, petting, and yes, naming the allegedly tame wild pheasants.

Alas, came the day we had to set them free.  We opened the coop and said our good-byes.  We thought the birds would immediately fly away into the bluffs, but some of them decided they liked us back and stuck around for a while.  We’d put food outside the coop for a while and periodically count them.  But one by one, the pheasants left, some becoming delicious meals for hunters or coyotes.

David had a lonely Winter staring at an empty coop, and by Springtime when the gun club asked the same question of him, he double the order!  We would now get 50 pheasants.

Following the same cycle as the year before, we received and were in the process of raising the birds.

While harmlessly walking through Fleet Farm (words I was sure I’d never utter 10 years ago), I lost David in the store.  Only to find him standing, mesmerized by a box of baby chickens.

“We already have the coop, Mary, can’t we just get a few?!?”

“Oh, God, no, David!  What would we do with chickens??”  That put him off for a week or so, but that only gave him a week to obsess about it.

Again, shopping at Fleet Farm (why, oh God, why??) I again found David hovering over the big box of chicks.  But now the pressure was on, there were only four chicks left.

“Mary, if we don’t buy them, what will happen to these poor lonely four chicks?” 

With that, I had to listen to 30 minutes of peeping while we drove back to Houston.

This coop that we built two years prior, that already raised 25, then 50 pheasants, would NEVER be big enough for four chickens, or so he convinced me!  “We’ve got to build a bigger and better coop!” he said.                                   Continue Reading