D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March 2010
Return to Funky Butte Ranch
The author of Farewell, My Subaru and his readers debate: Six strikes and you're out — to kill (he means "harvest") or not to harvest an incorrigible rooster.
By Doug Fine
Editor's note: When Mimbres rancher Doug Fine published his now-bestselling Farewell, My Subaru two years ago this month, Desert Exposure was among the first publications to predict that Fine's humorous-yet-literary account of a regular guy deciding to live sustainably (or die trying) would have reverberations far beyond Southwest New Mexico ("Green Acres," March 2008).
One "Tonight Show" appearance and scores of glowing reviews later, Farewell, My Subaru has been translated into Chinese and Korean, and brought Fine speaking invitations from as far as Taiwan and New Zealand. But for readers of Fine's "Dispatches From the Funky Butte Ranch" blog (www.dougfine.com) the "carbon-neutral misadventures" never end. A combination of philosophical, spiritual, useful and side-splittingly-funny, Fine's "Dispatches" have drawn more than 100,000 unique visitors since Farewell, My Subaru's initial publication.
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Hank, the rooster
whose fate was at stake. |
On the two-year anniversary of Farewell, My Subaru's appearance on bookstore shelves (and Kindle readers), we're delighted to print a favorite Dispatch from the Southwest's now-best-known sustainability author. And yes, the author tells us there are more books forthcoming from Fine's solar-powered keyboard.
Because the blog is such an interactive experience (regular visitors continually notice how many people Fine has induced to begin sustainable living themselves), we've also included the 35 reader comments on the Dispatch, many of which are funny in their own right. Fine is clearly a writer who is one of us. And he has to be: We're all in this planet-saving, local-living thing together, he says. As Fine (who comments online as "OrgoCowboy") puts it in the sign-offs to his emails, "Carbon-neutral or bust, everyone."
The Funky Butte Ranch rooster wasn't even supposed to be here. He was accidentally mailed live in a perforated box at age One Day by a catalogue chick-breeding company that I paid extra to send only pullets (females). There's no panicky call from the Postmistress like a "you have a box of live chickens here!" panicky call from the Postmistress. At first, I thought the gender mix-up was a fortuitous mistake — many chicken ranchers believe that hens produce more and healthier eggs when there's a male around the coop.
Indeed, "Hank" (not his real name) spent his initial year as a perfectly chivalrous and absolutely serene guardian to my 25 hens (in sync with the Ranch ecosystem, he is one of the few roosters in history who prefers to sleep in, so he rarely wakes me before dawn with egotistical crowing). He'd feed his girlfriends the choicest bugs and shoots, and let them hit the compost first.
In addition, the multi-chromatic Americauna is at least partly responsible for the fact that I have not had a single coyote depredation since his accidental arrival (readers of Farewell, My Subaru will know that I had too many avian casualties in earlier times thanks to a coyote I named "Dick Cheney," for his unauthorized surveillance of the Ranch). In short, I was pleased with Hank — he was like a walk-on quarterback who earned the starting job. Then, about six months ago, he suddenly became homicidally violent.
In the most brutal incident, Hank nearly pecked the eye out of one of my drakes (male ducks), who was lounging around plastic pool-side and minding his own business (the duck recovered). More regularly, he's started ripping feathers out of the chickens in his harem. There's no call for this kind of behavior. Or maybe it's that, since a good part of his daily responsibility involves making love to every chicken he sees without any competition, Hank's incorrigibility just goes to show that anything can stop being fun if it's your job. The ducks mean him no harm, and the hens appeared to be fine with his earlier, more-respectful courtship. They sure produce an artery-clogging number of eggs. So Hank's nasty personality turn seems all the more uncalled-for.
Now, in the four additional bird square-offs that I've witnessed, he inflates his shoulder-length, golden mane feathers peacock-like into an eerily gravity-defying circle, and starts wreaking havoc on all avian comers with bee-line attacks and savage beak rips (he remains docile in my presence, by the way, which is very, very wise). This aggressiveness is particularly unfair in the case of ducks, whose bills lack offensive firepower. It's like bombing Bhutan.
So I don't know how to put it more delicately: Since I've given Hank three chances and then three more, should I well, shouldn't I eat him? This is not part of the Funky Butte Ranch protein plan. My strategy for meat, which I am increasingly coming to believe that my blood type demands (just once or twice per week), is a sustainable harvest of one elk per year from my ecosystem — believe me, that's more than enough for my needs.
I definitely don't require his meat. But there's more to the story. Hank and all the fowl are members of the Funky Butte Ranch family. My toddler loves the birds. I mean, take it from me: one doesn't name future meals. That is to say, I'm not the kind of guy who looks at a chicken and sees a six piece Val-U-Meal, the way the canine Dick Cheney did (and who can blame him? He was eating locally, and walking to work). I think a longer-term benefit is a happy flock giving tons of eggs for years. But when is enough enough?
Regardless of Hank's fate, the Felonious Rooster Dilemma is causing me to give heavy thought to the whole penitentiary system. The new-and-improved Funky Butte Ranch chicken coop, which is the only maximum security lockdown on the property, is designed to keep coyotes OUT, not chickens IN, and that's where Hank's victims live. So I'm beginning to think it's either the death sentence or complete coddling for the foul fowl.
In closing this Dispatch, I can't help but feel that mine is a modern Sensitive Age dilemma. I don't want to call it soft or otherwise diminish its importance — working through moral dilemmas is what I do the way some people play chess, or really believe in politicians. Still, I'm giving a lot of thought to the hopes and aspirations of a creature most people eat in the form of "Six Piece Nuggets."
I think of Renee Zellweger's earthy Ruby Thewes' line to Nicole Kidman's rich-girl Asa Monroe character in the terrific film version of the even more terrific Civil War-era Cold Mountain novel: "I hate uppity chickens," Ruby remarks, upon manually decapitating the bird that has been terrifying Ada for months — she solved the problem without guilt within a minute of arrival on the scene. Now, I don't think I'm going to make this important decision based on a vote (or a movie), but I'm definitely interested in opinions. Until then, I'm at least a part-time avian cage fighting referee. Can I put that under "occupation" on my tax return?
Responses:
March 7, 10:47 p.m.
Walter:
You don't have to eat him (although I would, you don't want to be one of those people that order a huge meal and then not eat half). I would place him on the other side of the fence, let him survive for himself. You might be surprised how long he lasts. Just remember if another animal eats him, he didn't go to waste.
March 7, 11:17 p.m.
Annika:
I grew up with chickens so I say kill the damn thing. Though I do hold fast to my belief that nothing is more delicious than a fertilized chicken egg.
March 8, 8:07 a.m.
OrgoCowboy [Doug Fine]:
Walter, I don't think putting him outside will work, because all the chickens and ducks are outside during the day. Not that I didn't consider this — it would work at night, but the birds are so diurnal that Hank isn't even a threat past dusk. It's like his mojo fades into fear, or at least sleepiness.
March 8, 8:53 a.m.
Jenny:
What's that old saying? oh yeah, if you can't beat 'em, eat 'em!