Marilyne went to Chamonix last week to see her family and catch the end of the ski season. I had a writing deadline, so I stayed home. Between the lure of the mountains and her parents lingering, boozy dinners, I knew I’d get nothing done over there.
Normally, my daily chore list isn’t as extensive as those of our real farmer neighbors. It mostly involves chopping, hauling, and sawing firewood; meal preparation support; miscellaneous, minor home improvement; and co-wrangling our kittens Donut and Mandy. Our new chickens added new items to the list, mostly due to my lack of trust for the coop’s automatic sliding door. It descends at dusk and reopens at dawn and looks a lot like a guillotine. The way I see it, it’s just a matter of time before a chicken makes a poorly-time exit or entrance and… This is, after all, France.
With Marilyne leaving, my cat care duties tripled. I’ve never cleaned a litterbox before. It’s a disgusting, smelly job. Donut likes to shovel piles of sand out of the box and all over the floor every time he does his business. This makes cleaning up after him disgusting, smelly, and demeaning.
Luckily, our garden is still mostly dormant, but Marilyne planted dozens of seeds in little pots on a green, plastic roller cart intended for serving cocktails. One of my other new chores was to water the saplings sprouting in the pots. Because it’s been freezing at night, I also needed to wheel the cart outside in the morning and back inside at dusk, right after checking for headless chickens.
The first day went great. I even managed to eat a couple times and brush my teeth.
Day two went mostly the same, except Donut bolted outside when I was going out for my nightly chicken check. We haven’t installed cat doors yet. When your walls are three-foot-thick stone and your doors are carved wood that were probably installed before you were born and will probably be there long after you’re gone, you put a little extra thought into where and how you’re going to punch a hole through them.
The cats come back inside when Marilyne calls them. I don’t really garner that level of respect. After 20 minutes roaming the property using Marilyne’s method—waving around a sachet of cat food and crooning “Donut! Me-me-me! Pew-pew-pew!” in a falsetto, I decided to stop humiliating myself in front of the livestock and went back inside.
I left the front door open as the temperature sank below zero, until our boy cat sashayed back in at his leisure. It wasn’t that big of a deal. I put a few extra logs in the fire and wore a sweater. Donut came home safe and everything turned out fine.
Although I may have forgotten to brush my teeth.
The battle of day three.
On the third day, one of the chickens seemed listless. Her name is Don, one of our first two birds. She is a spunky bantam hen with attitude who’d popped out an egg daily since arrival. Today, she just sat there, not moving. She offered no resistance when I picked her up. The only times I’ve ever seen a chicken this still were when it was sleeping or in a KFC bucket, so this seemed wrong.
I went into the house to ask Google for help.
If you’ve ever looked to the Internet for medical advice, you know that nearly any symptom is a sure sign of cancer. Strange bump? Cancer. Achy muscle? Cancer. Hangnail? Cancer.
Same with chickens. If you ask what’s wrong with your chicken, the Internet will tell you that it probably has a hideous illness that could wipe out the rest of your flock.
I sat in a pool of flop sweat reading about avian influenza when an enormous feline screech came from outside. My first thought was that Don had bird rabies, had escaped the enclosure, and was savagely attacking Donut.
I ran outside just in time to see a fat, orange tabby plodding off towards the barn. Donut had gotten into his first turf war. He was hiding in a drainage pipe running along our fence that our cats often play in. Lucky for him, it’s much too small for the Garfield-wannabe fleeing across our back field.
There was a large, mucousy poop at the mouth of the pipe, as well as a few tufts of orange hair. I assumed that they both came from the interloper. The hair meant that Donut had gotten a piece of him. The mucous meant he had some horrible disease, at least according to the Internet. I took mild solace in both of these conclusions as I tried to coax my cat out of his hiding place.
Then it started to hail.
Both Donut and Don had shelter at this point. The cocktail cart saplings did not. I wheeled them into the gas room, thus called because it houses our gas water heater and gas furnace. The room has no natural light.
I’d initially suggested that we leave the cart in there for Marilyne’s entire absence, but she said no because the lack of UV rays would be bad for the saplings.
I was a little frazzled; it didn’t occur to me that leaving them in the dark room for an hour or so as the storm passed would be fine. Honoring my wife’s wishes, I wheeled the cocktail cart through three rooms to the sunniest part of the house, leaving a wet, muddy trail as I navigated furniture and avoided rugs. I wished we were using the cart for its intended purpose so I could pour myself a bourbon.
The plants seemed okay. There was nothing I could do about Donut. I considered sticking a shop-vac into the pipe to suck him out, but that probably would not have been successful, even if it had been successful. I turned my attention to the chicken and did what any smart man with my skillset would do in this situation.
I called my wife.
I proposed that she call the vet on my behalf, given the language barrier. Her sister was with her and they immediately retorted that this would not be country strong. I countered that we were in danger of giving rabies to the entire flock. Also, I had a small cut on my finger from wheeling in the cocktail cart, so I probably had cancer.
It was decided that Marilyne would call Melanie, the woman who’d gifted us Don, and ask her advice.
Eventually, Donut limped into the house, covered in mud. I couldn’t see any blood, but he wasn’t using one of his hind legs. He wouldn’t let me near him for a couple hours, at which point he let me inspect for injuries. I couldn’t find broken skin, although his rear leg was off-limits. Two hours after that, he hobbled over to the couch and asked to be picked up. He was completely clean, having licked a huge amount of mud off his hide. From that point onward, he demanded constant physical contact unless he was eating or using the litter box. Graciously, he took a break from shoveling kitty litter onto the tiles.
I called Marilyne again. This time, she was more pro-vet, but we decided to give the cat a day before going in. His leg wound seemed minor, like a twist or a muscle pull.
The chicken whisperer.
Marilyne spoke to Melanie, who came by regularly to check on her horses. (We let them eat grass in our field.) She would come by later that day to check on Don.
Melanie is a small, young woman with dreadlocks. I’d describe her as a hippy, but her Frenchness gives her an aura of savoir-faire that makes “bohemian” a better descriptor.
She determined that, yes, Don was sick. You can tell if a chicken has been eating by feeling their chest, where you’ll find an organ called a craw, or jabot in French. That’s where the expression “stuck in my craw” comes from.
It’s a reservoir in the digestive system of most birds. Sort of a pre-stomach. With chickens, if the jabot is full, that means the bird is eating well. In Don’s case, it seemed full, but when Melanie pressed it gently, the poor chicken vomited water and was left with an empty jabot.
In simple, slow, talking-to-the-old-foreign-guy-who-just-says-yes-no-matter-what-I-say French, Melanie suggested she take Don home with her. She said that she would bring the bird back if she could save her. Otherwise, she blunted stated, the chicken would die. It was a kind gesture, even if her existential reminder of Don’s mortality jarred me a little.
A little help from my friends.
As I sat by the fire that night trying to negotiate some personal space from Donut, our friend Sarah texted.
Sarah and Joe are a British couple who dropped off the grid 20 years ago. They moved to the Creuse region of France where she settled into life as a (talented) painter and he as an (also talented) woodworker. They’ve spent the last two decades converting a massive old barn into a house. It’s now a sprawling, confusing, happy home to visit—kind of the Winchester Mystery House by way of The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Before the cat and chicken apocalypse befell La Villatte, I’d invited Sarah and Joe to go see a pub rock band called Rue d’ la Soif play at Café de l’Espace, a tiny bar in a small town called Flayat about 10 kilometers from here.
Sarah couldn’t go, but Joe, who’s always up for a party, was interested—provided I pick him up.
The next day, Donut seemed on the mend. I hadn’t heard anything about Don. I really just wanted to spend the night sitting by the fire with my needy cat, but I’m trying to build relationships here in France. I didn’t want to flake on my new British ami. I put on my best AC/DC t-shirt and my red Pendleton flannel and headed out.
Locals only—and everyone is a local!
Joe was already a couple pints deep when I picked him up. He’s chatty when he’s sober, but after a couple drinks, he goes into a complete stream of consciousness monologue that I absolutely love because 1) after twenty years in the Creuse region, he’s a font of knowledge and 2) there’s zero chance of awkward silences when he’s around. I hate awkward silences. I always feel like they’re my fault.
Le Café de l’Espace is an espace associatif, which is basically a club house, like a Moose Lodge. Another way to think about it is as a community-run bar. I’m pretty sure that someone more-or-less owns it, but it’s maintained by the locals. Most of the staff are volunteers. Everyone knows each other. Beers cost three euros. I think wine is cheaper. You need to bring your own cup unless you want to pay a one-euro deposit for a plastic cup.
The space looks like some local guy defiantly installed a bar in his living room after his wife left him and got a little carried away.
It’s open on weekends for concerts, as well as during the week for workshops and lectures. There’s usually a food truck out front. On big nights, the party spills out into the street and a neighboring courtyard where there’s a fire pit.
They have a strict all-ages policy, so if you’re dancing, you need to be careful not to take out a toddler or clip a senior citizen.
Joe received a Norm from Cheers-like reception when we arrived. He knew everyone. He introduced me to a few people. They were all very friendly and could not grasp why someone from Los Angeles would want to move to rural France.
I tried to engage, but I really didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was exhausted from 48 solid hours of animal husbandry. When the band started, I feigned rapt interest and pushed myself towards the stage.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rue d’ la Soif played loud, ragged rock ‘n roll best heard in a small, sweaty space after a beer or three. The lead singer was a big fella with tattoos and cargo pants who knew how to work a crowd. The accordion player looked like my dead sister’s ex-husband, only wearing glasses. If that’s a lot for you to unpack, imagine how I felt.
True to their name, which means “Street of the Thirst,” they pounded back pint after pint of beer—I assume they got their cups for free—as they pounded out anthemic songs sounding like everyone from AC/DC to The Sweet to Nirvana, only in French with an accordion.
A mosh pit formed up front. Unlike the slugfests I’ve experienced in the US, UK, and Australia, it didn’t seem dangerous. Yes, there was enough shoving to weed out the kids and older folk, but there was also a lot of hugging and if anyone fell over, the crowd collectively caught them. The band’s lead singer referred to the action on the floor as la dance pogo, a mellow version of slam dancing with a lot of jumping up and down.
As a 54-years-old with an arthritic shoulder and chickens and cat who depend on me, common sense suggested I stand on the outskirts and enjoy the chaos. It was milder than, say, a Black Flag concert, but it still packed a punch. Joe wandered up next to me just as the band started a song that borrowed the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” opening riff. We launched into the Nirvana version, only to discover neither of us knew the words past “Here we are now, entertain us.”
We exchanged a shrug and, for some reason, knew what we had to do next: dance pogo.
We dove into the crowd. A few minutes later, I lost Joe. A few minutes after that, I lost myself, blissfully bouncing up and down, intermittently slamming into or hugging sweaty men twice my size and half my age. (There were also women on the floor, but my abandon has its propriety.) I resurfaced only once to regret having worn a wool shirt to a rock concert.
Two hours later, I stood at the front of the crowd, face-to-face with the lead singer, singing along, thrilled that I had learned the words to a French song! Of course, the only words in the song were “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” but I wasn’t going to relinquish this little victory on a technicality.
The cats woke me the next morning at dawn. My ears rang and my shoulder throbbed. Donut’s limp was gone. Our remaining five chickens showed no signs of rabies. There’s not a dry cleaner within 100 kilometers of here and I don’t know what the French version of Woolite is, so I had hung my Pendleton out overnight in hopes of eliminating the farmer sweat and beer smell. It had worked.
As I sipped coffee and watched my little poultry flock peck away at cantaloupe rinds and soggy baguettes, I wondered what drama awaited me today.
It started to hail, again. I smiled.
Bring it on.
Dude - You're not going to leave us hanging about Don, are you?!
Another delightful read on your wonderful and life-enhancing rural experiences. Keep them coming. These are outstanding! Take care of that shoulder!