A rooster’s quest for love never ends. From dawn to dusk, a courting he will go. The only thing that slows a rooster down is nightfall. Once it is time to go to bed, they give up love’s conquest. They’ll even roost next to roosters they compete with during the day.

Spring creeps ever closer. The daffodils are sending their flower buds up toward the sky. More green than yellow today, each day their buds turn ever more yellow.

Fuller baskets of eggs are a sure sign of spring’s approach. Each week, more hens stir from their winter break to lay eggs. I read about an egg farm, Trillium Farms, in Ohio which produces 8,000,000 eggs every day, which means they must have some 10,000,000 or so hens. Details about the farm were in an article about migrant children forced to work for $2 a day in horrible conditions at the farm. The next time you buy eggs, think about where they came from. No one needs to suffer for you to eat.

When I go out to gather eggs, thirty or more chickens sometimes come chasing after me. It’s my fault. I often give them several scoops of sunflower seeds, something they love to eat. Ever hear the pitter-patter of tens of chickens chasing after you? It’s a delightful sound that’ll put the smile on your face. I wonder what the sound of ten million hens running after me would sound like?

This gray time of year, with day after day of clouds, drizzle, and rain, I can feel like this leaf looks. A walk in the woods, among the green ferns helps.

It’s King Richard who knows how to perk me up. Such razzle, dazzle. Maybe there is something to be said about dressing up in brilliant clothes, at least wearing a flaming red hat. Hens are into dressing up too. Plain won’t do for them. Even the hens, who from a distance look like they are wearing a simple outfit, when you get up close, have feathers of exquisite patterns. “Drab be gone, drab be gone,” is their siren call.

Poor Sven. After a morning deluge, he is so soaked, his feathers are dragging in the mud. Nothing looks as sorry as a wet rooster. What he needs is a hole in the sky, just what I found on my bicycle ride home from the post office. There, off to the south, a hole in the sky, a hole so bright it could have been an alien spaceship blasting its way down for a landing. I could have been seconds away from being whisked away to another galaxy. It’s one possibility if you never hear from me again. If I go silent, look up on a clear, moonless night. Somewhere way out there, far, far away, among the galaxies millions of light years away, that’s where they will have taken me.

Too many roosters, so some have to go. Sad rooster, happy cat. I can’t finish butchering a rooster without our cat coming into the kitchen and meowing until I give him fresh liver. How does he even know I am doing a rooster? He sleeps during the day, a long ways from the kitchen. He gets drawn into the kitchen like my husband does when I’m baking bread.