Home

It be a simple fact that "Home" is a four-letter which, herstorically, has spewed from my mouth with meaner tones than any of the four-letter classics which so deeply rattle the prim and proper cages. Home. . . The storage container of unrealistic expectations, delusions and secret operations. The most secretive messages which required my high level DOD security clearance to read were downright tame compaired to the secrets kept in the average home, world wide, whatever the lifestyle ideals espoused by the primary resident(s). I have invested a great deal of added verbage to avoid using that word over the course of my senior lifetime. "Time get back to the farm/hotel/creature comforts/delusion factory/etcetera/etceteri." Home remains a vague concept for me and in my wanders across 3 continents, I have yet to visit a home I would care to wake up in for the rest of my life. Herstorically, my houses have held my things far more than they have held my life. Houses are just buildings. All buildings serve and destroy on the same basic principle. I amnae a much of a lover of the Great Indoors.

Yesterday's interstate drive through Ouchita Mountains might have redefined "Home" for me. The paradigm shift is still percolating through the murky waters of those mean tones and cynical views, but the 3 orphans were pulling heart strings I didn't know I had in their fierce determination to get home as quickly as possible. Not even a major theme park could compete with the water slide they knew I had stashed beneath the sink in the big bathroom at home. Processing. . . Sorting. . . Listening for words for ^it^. . . Savoring the contented calm of our first morning back on the farm.

Among the treats awaiting us when we returned were two freshly hatched chicks in the back coop. These are the first hen-hatched chicks I have experienced. To date, all of the chickens I have worked with have been machine hatched and the older hens most often attack and kill new chicks with enthusiastic determination. I protect my flock increases from their future flockmates far more carefully than I guard against predators who enjoy a tasty chicken dinner. Are the hen-hatched chicks birds of a different feather? Yesterday I picked up one of those little cuties and was immediately attacked by 6 hens. My life and safety werenae in danger, but the startle effect was dramatic. WTF! ! ! Remember who feeds you, feather heads! ! ! 

Observation in progress. . . The flock sure seems to treat them like birds of a different feather than machine hatched chicks.