Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter Page B
Authors: Novella Carpenter
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dad. An eyeglasses-wearing gardening teacher who wanted some hens for her schoolyard. The teacher expressed interest in getting other animals, too, and so, like a dealer, I gave her my extra copy of The Encyclopedia of Country Living. I laughed when I imagined that soon the school would have bees and then a turkey, a few ducks.
I finally managed to whittle down the flock to a reasonable number, six, and the neighborhood gave a large collective sigh of relief.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The automotive shop behind our backyard had a ten-foot-high fence, festooned with razor wire. Behind that fence lurked the shop’s two large crime-stopping dogs. One day, Maude, being smaller than Harold and perhaps having an especially low species-specific sense of recognition, tried her luck clearing that fence in order to meet the dogs. Unfortunately, she succeeded.
I heard the barking, her shrieks, Harold’s gobbles, and I came running. Feathers were literally flying. The cream-colored pit bull and the Rottweiler mix danced around Maude in the auto-shop yard. I scaled the fence.
Compared to the locals, I made a terrible fence climber. Every once in a while there is a car chase down MLK: squealing tires, police sirens, engines opening up. If the pursued car careens around our corner, it soon encounters a dead end: a schoolyard circled by a twenty-foot-tall fence. Not having options, the car thieves usually throw open the car door and sprint to the fence. I timed them once: five seconds to get to the top. The cops got out of their cars, lights flashing, and watched them climb away to freedom.
Now I got a startling reality check into what remarkable physical strength it took to scramble up a chain-link fence. The metal cut into my hands; my toes were jammed painfully into the small openings. Once near the top, I had to negotiate to an area without razor wire. My biceps quivered. I was a weak Spider-Woman. I yelled discouraging words to the dogs in my best stern voice: “No. Bad dogs! No.”
Amazingly, instead of sinking their teeth into my ass, they backed away from Maude when I scaled down their side of the fence and landed in the auto-shop parking lot. On the asphalt, Maude lay torn and dead, her white and black feathers dotted with blood.
I stood in the middle of the parking lot and caught my breath. The Rottweiler looked up at me expectantly. If this had been Idaho, things would have been different. My parents’ ranch dog, Zachary, wouldn’t stop eating their chickens, and so one day, after another dead hen, my dad put a bullet in his head. That was country life for you.
I patted the Rottweiler’s head without thinking. He didn’t know what he had done. Maude’s flight into their yard had to have been one of the highlights of their careers as junkyard dogs. There was only one way that scenario—turkey meets dogs—could have played out.
I was only a few feet from my backyard, but my house looked so different from here. Smaller. The gray paint was peeling; the stairs were scuffed and worn. I picked Maude up. Her eyes were closed; her throat was clotted with dark red blood. She was warm. Unlike Harold, she didn’t have an impressive snood or wattles. From her head sprouted a few wispy black hairs. Though her body was small, she was dense and weighed more than a chicken. Her gray reptilian feet were scaled, but her toenails blushed with a bit of pink.
I tried to climb back with Maude in my hand. This was impossible, so I had to fling her limp body over the fence. On my trip back, the fence ripped my corduroy pants in the thigh and the crotch.
Harold discovered Maude before I reached our side of the fence. He was acting weird, puffing up and preening around her prone body. He was doing a mating dance, I think, as if he confused her current state with readiness to mate. Then he hit his head on the ground, making a strange thumping sound.
My eyes welled up at this curious spectacle. Harold mourned, and so did I. The injustice, the
I finally managed to whittle down the flock to a reasonable number, six, and the neighborhood gave a large collective sigh of relief.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The automotive shop behind our backyard had a ten-foot-high fence, festooned with razor wire. Behind that fence lurked the shop’s two large crime-stopping dogs. One day, Maude, being smaller than Harold and perhaps having an especially low species-specific sense of recognition, tried her luck clearing that fence in order to meet the dogs. Unfortunately, she succeeded.
I heard the barking, her shrieks, Harold’s gobbles, and I came running. Feathers were literally flying. The cream-colored pit bull and the Rottweiler mix danced around Maude in the auto-shop yard. I scaled the fence.
Compared to the locals, I made a terrible fence climber. Every once in a while there is a car chase down MLK: squealing tires, police sirens, engines opening up. If the pursued car careens around our corner, it soon encounters a dead end: a schoolyard circled by a twenty-foot-tall fence. Not having options, the car thieves usually throw open the car door and sprint to the fence. I timed them once: five seconds to get to the top. The cops got out of their cars, lights flashing, and watched them climb away to freedom.
Now I got a startling reality check into what remarkable physical strength it took to scramble up a chain-link fence. The metal cut into my hands; my toes were jammed painfully into the small openings. Once near the top, I had to negotiate to an area without razor wire. My biceps quivered. I was a weak Spider-Woman. I yelled discouraging words to the dogs in my best stern voice: “No. Bad dogs! No.”
Amazingly, instead of sinking their teeth into my ass, they backed away from Maude when I scaled down their side of the fence and landed in the auto-shop parking lot. On the asphalt, Maude lay torn and dead, her white and black feathers dotted with blood.
I stood in the middle of the parking lot and caught my breath. The Rottweiler looked up at me expectantly. If this had been Idaho, things would have been different. My parents’ ranch dog, Zachary, wouldn’t stop eating their chickens, and so one day, after another dead hen, my dad put a bullet in his head. That was country life for you.
I patted the Rottweiler’s head without thinking. He didn’t know what he had done. Maude’s flight into their yard had to have been one of the highlights of their careers as junkyard dogs. There was only one way that scenario—turkey meets dogs—could have played out.
I was only a few feet from my backyard, but my house looked so different from here. Smaller. The gray paint was peeling; the stairs were scuffed and worn. I picked Maude up. Her eyes were closed; her throat was clotted with dark red blood. She was warm. Unlike Harold, she didn’t have an impressive snood or wattles. From her head sprouted a few wispy black hairs. Though her body was small, she was dense and weighed more than a chicken. Her gray reptilian feet were scaled, but her toenails blushed with a bit of pink.
I tried to climb back with Maude in my hand. This was impossible, so I had to fling her limp body over the fence. On my trip back, the fence ripped my corduroy pants in the thigh and the crotch.
Harold discovered Maude before I reached our side of the fence. He was acting weird, puffing up and preening around her prone body. He was doing a mating dance, I think, as if he confused her current state with readiness to mate. Then he hit his head on the ground, making a strange thumping sound.
My eyes welled up at this curious spectacle. Harold mourned, and so did I. The injustice, the
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