How to Meow in Yiddish: A Chicken Rodeo In Arizona

As it turned out Aunt Julia had to sleep on her sofa for a few more nights. The idea that we could move right into the old hogan was optimistic to say the least. The cleaning and furnishing would have to wait on a few things.

After I made breakfast, fried potatoes with onions and sausages, we all sat together and talked chickens over coffee. Jessie and I decided to drive into town for the chicken wire and some chicken feed, since the girls wouldn’t be able to feed themselves as much while confined. We knew that being seen too much was not really very stealthy, but we took cash so there would not be a digital trail to us from our purchases.

When we got to Howdy Hank’s feed store, which was a rather rustic place with a teepee outside, we didn’t mention whose chickens this stuff was for, who we were, or where we were living. Cashier, an old guy named Pete, with a gray ponytail, in a denim jacket and jeans, didn’t seem to pay much attention to us at all. But I bet he wondered later.

Driving home felt nice. We were already changing into locals in our own minds.

Julia was nothing if not a good sport. I think she enjoyed the excitement or maybe disruption of having us there moving her life around. She also seemed to like my cooking, fortunately. Sometimes a different cook is a relief from one’s own old dishes. She was teaching me some things they ate around there, such as the fry bread, and what to do with chilis.

Jessie and I spent our second day there making the fence, which included a gate. The gate was a little bother, but we did it. It opened and closed just like a gate should, swinging on two steel hinges and fastened with a hook and eye. After that, it was matter of catching the six hens and putting them in there. This sounds simple. It may have been simple, but it was not easy.

Neither Jessie nor I had any experience with hens. I guess we thought we would just pick them up when the time came to put them in the enclosure. Therefore, the first attempt was a casual stroll toward a chicken, which neatly evaded the attempted by walking briskly out of arm’s reach. Hm. We found that chickens are wily creatures in their way. She was black. We named her Ruth.

Jessie said that sometimes, he had heard, that if you come straight at a chicken she will just sit down on the ground as if she is frightened into a sort of freeze. Ok, the red one, we called her Matilda, fell for this gambit. I walked right at her, and she sat right down in the dust looking confused really. I picked her up and deposited her on the other side of the fence. She commenced checking the new enclosure out. There was a pan of water prepared for her and some scattered chicken feed. This seemed to suit. None of the other five knew this sitting trick.

Aunt Julia and her cane came out to watch and laugh. “If you wait until dark,” she said, “you can grab them when they go to roost out in the hogan. They don’t try to run away after dark. It’s not in their nature.”

Billy wound himself around her feet then sat watching Matilda moving around the chicken run. He seemed to be near Aunt Julia at all times. Together they walked back up the path and into her little mobile house. The door banged shut and the phone rang.

The caller was Ben Nez, one of her grandchildren. I knew his name and that he was 18 years old, recently graduated from the Joseph City high school. On the way down to Arizona Jessie had filled me in on family members. Julia and John had only two children. A son and a daughter. The son, also Ben Nez, was this caller’s father. Ben was calling to check up on his grandmother and see if she needed anything at the store. She told him that she was fine and didn’t need anything right then. She didn’t mention us.

This introduced a bit of a problem. Who were we? People around here would know Jessie from before he left the reservation to go north. We decided to rename me. For purposes of introductions, I would be Linda Walz, claiming to go by my maiden name.

We knew that continuing to use our own licensed car was a point of vulnerability. It is hard to vanish where people know you, like they did Jessie, but Reservations have some advantages in that way. Something for another day.

Night came early since it was late in the year and dark does fall early anyhow between high hills. It was dark near the ground but above the stars shone in a way I never saw them on Washington’s cloudy west coast.

Time to catch chickens!

You can see in the relative dark if you give your eyes a chance to acclimate. That’s what we did. We waited until we could see where we were walking. I followed Jessie behind the mobile and into the hogan. It was really dark in there. The remaining five chickens made some slight noises in response to being disturbed by our arrival.

The roof timbers were a little too high to reach from the floor, so Jessie had to feel around for his uncle’s toolbox and stand on that to reach the chickens and true to Julia’s word, they did not try to escape. He handed them to me one by one. I was sorry but I had to hold them by their feet in an undignified manner to be able to hold all five until he got down and took some of them. We petted and talked to them, the other three we had named Minnie, Suzy, and Louise.

Then it was an easy matter to take them to their little house and tuck them inside, promising to build a roost inside it soon.

Walking back to the house, I looked up at all those stars and thinking of the time of year, I wondered what Christmas would be like here on the reservation in Arizona.