Tripping the chickens

Following is an excerpt from Marilyn’s autobiography, Splashes of Rainbows and Feathers.

The milking barn had been built many years before my parents bought our place. I loved the old barn, and spent many hours exploring the hayloft. The barn smelled of hay and milk, a smell I came to love.

In the summertime, the big door to the barn was left open. Mom’s setting hens would wander in there and make nests in the straw. Being a curious and sometimes-mischievous farm girl, I would wander in there, looking to see what fun I could stir up. When I saw those old hens sitting on their nests, I’d get ideas!

One particular day, Tim and I devised what we thought was a fun game with those hens!

Tim and I strung baling twine up and down the sides of the open door to the barn, one layer over another. When we were finished, the only way to get in or out of the door was to crawl under or over our twine trap!

I gave Tim an old broom and told him to go behind the hens and chase them off their nests! Tim went in slowly and the hens saw him. They hunkered down in their nests of straw and began to cluck softly. Tim pounded the straw behind them with the broom. They clucked and squawked and flew off their nests. Straw and dirt flew everywhere! The more the hens squawked and flew around, the harder Tim hit the straw. He soon had all the hens off their nests and tried to “herd” them toward the open barn door.

I stood outside the door and watched as the hens tried to fly over the twine we’d strung up! The air was filled with feathers, dirt and straw. The hens tried their hardest to fly over the layers of twine. The hens made an unbelievable racket when they either got hung up in the layers of twine or escaped, fleeing for their lives!

I laughed so hard I could hardly stand upright! Tim was laughing hysterically back in the barn! I can only imagine how this must have sounded from the house.

Of course our mother did not miss all this commotion and racket. She ran across the yard, yelling the entire time! Mom did not find our antics at all funny because these were her laying hens. She gave us quite a stern speech and threatened to have Dad tan our hides when he came home. After getting such a fright, the hens didn’t lay one solitary egg for days!