This is Izzy and her egg. She’s one of the last chickens I paid money for, before I started slipping fertilized eggs under a broody hen’s bum and giving them the chance to be a mom.

I bought Izzy so Ruby wasn’t all alone, as she was the lone survivor of Betty’s babies and there weren’t any pullets for her to hang with. So along came Izzy, a dominique I got from my duck guy who was getting out of the chicken business due to a bear killing them every single week. 

At first, Izzy didn’t want anything to do with Ruby, or any of the chickens really. She would run to me every day, wanting inside the house, or just fly on top of my head when it was time to roost instead of going inside the coop with the other girls. She’s a scared little chicken most of the time, and she will always be the loudest when you know something is scaring her, or, if she just feels like talking. Eventually, she and Ruby became friendly, though I suspect Izzy hates Ruby because of the way she pecks at her when they’re eating together, and, as far as the pecking order goes, Izzy is firmy ahead of Ruby. They are frenemies for sure, proving to me something I already knew: you can’t buy your friends. Not even if you’re a chicken. 

It’s hard moving to a new old town, one you always wanted to live in, and make new friends. When I was little, chickens were my only friends, which is a fact that will surprise no one. And I guess I suspected that it would be easier to make new human friends in this familiar place but it just isn’t the case. Adulthood is a hard time to make friends anyway, but then you throw in moving to a new place, during a pandemic, and your proclivity towards fact-based, though seemingly left-leaning information consumption, and your newness is up against old friends and old lovers and old houses and it goes on and on. 

And then there’s just the oddness of me.

And you throw all that together and there I am, in the yard, wondering about the relationships of my chickens. 

I miss my friends, and I miss the ease of making new ones when you aren’t up against all the odds I’m up against. In the meantime, I guess I will get some fertilized eggs from a neighbor, slip them under Stella, and see what happens next.