Mother Hen

This is the chicken that greets me every morning. I call her The General. She's a chicken my mom left behind, actually (isn't that the beginning of a country song??). So this chicken and I never had a real relationship, because she was just Somebody's Else's Chicken, I never sought her out, you know, like to join a book club, or have coffee at a corner cafe on a cool summer evening or something. But wait I digress. I call her the General because when I'm sleeping at like 6 a.m., she hops the fence where she lives with the other Less Organized Chickens, and she comes strolling over near my window. And then she starts just sort of talking, like not desperately, but sort of just rambling on in soft chicken noises until I wake up. And basically she's saying Look, Lady with the Food, the other chickens are going to be up soon. You really need to start thinking about getting up. Are you up yet? I'm going to wait out here until you get up. You are not going to sleep well if I keep talking in this clucking noise. You will wake up and silently curse me, and then stagger out, and I will look militantly at you and then dutifully follow you back to the gate where The Food Is.

And of course, this is how it goes all summer so far. She is the Mother Hen, she is in charge of Morning. She gets the food happening for her troops and then she settles in for a nice egg lay, promptly afterwards. And I have to build a higher fence. But I am secretly happy there is a General, that weighs about 2 pounds, is scrawny, and not at all like we picture someone in charge to look. Be aware. You may have a secret leader yourself.