Number 9

The area birding community has been all a-twitter since a migrating whooping crane came to pay us a visit.  There are only about 550 whoopers left, and only 100 in the Eastern Migratory Population, so this is a pretty exciting event.  Birders are grabbing their binoculars and flocking to the UF Beef Teaching Unit, which is always home to hundreds of sandhill cranes this time of year.  The whooper, tall, regal and brilliant white, stands out like royalty among the smaller and darker sandhills.  He's been here for 10 days now and seems to like it.

If you are a whooping crane, there is not much about your life that is private.  This particular whooper had a red and white tag on his left leg and a green tag on his right leg, identifying him as #9-2013, the last and youngest chick to be selected for Operation Migration's Class of 2013.

Whooping cranes came perilously close to extinction in the 1940s, when only 15 wild migrating whoopers remained.  All of these belonged to what is known as the Western Flock, which divide their time between northwestern Canada and the Gulf Coast of Texas.  Today the Western Flock numbers more than 200, and an effort is being made to introduce a second wild population that migrates from Wisconsin to Florida.  Under the auspices of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership,  eggs laid by captive bird populations are hatched in incubators, raised by humans in costumes, and transported to Wisconsin each June.  There they are trained by Operation Migration to follow ultralight aircraft in a fall migration to Florida. Their arrival at St. Mark's Wildlife Refuge on Apalachee Bay is an annual event, with hundreds of people turning out to see the cranes arrive.

According to Journey North, a program of the Annenberg Foundation that tracks seasonal migrations, "Crane chick #9-13 was hatched from an egg rescued from the abandoned nest of the Wisconsin pair #24-08 and 14-08. ... He became part of the [migrating Class of 2013] when chick #6 got sick and had to be replaced. The first few weeks the team worried that #9 had aggression issues. He kept pecking at his puppet so hard it had to be taken away. The team was relieved when #9-13 began walking with the other chicks. Chick #9 turned out okay after all."

His cohort began their migration south on October 2, 2013 and after some adventures and mis-adventures arrived at St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge on January 5, 2014.  Little #9, the youngest of his class, had by this time grown to be the largest of the eight birds.  That spring, six of the group including #9 made it safely back to their grounds in Wisconsin in an unaided migration. Although the cohort stayed together though the summer and early fall, #9 went off on his own in October.  He began his second southward migration on November 13, 2014, the same day as the rest of his group, but independently, departing from a different county and flying alone.  He was sighted in Kentucky on December 3, and made it to the Beef Teaching Unit here in Gainesville on December 11.

The Beef Teaching Unit is a 65-acre farm owned by the University of Florida and used in teaching Animal Sciences classes.  It is home to 35 cows of various types and, during migrating season, hundreds of sandhill cranes, earning its nickname "Sandhill Station".  The BTU is a strange oasis in the midst of an area heavily populated by students and surrounded by apartment complexes.  It isn't open to the public and there is no nearby parking, but every morning these days you'll find a cadre of birders on the sidewalk with binoculars and telephoto lenses looking at #9.

He really is impressive.  Adult whoopers stand five feet tall, just like me, and are the largest North American bird.  They have a wingspan of 7.5 feet.   At rest they look blindingly white, with long black bills and long black legs.   In flight their beautiful black wingtips are visible.  The species was named for the distinctive sound of its call.  I'd love to hear #9, but he hasn't made a peep the times I've seen him.   The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a whooper recording you can hear.

Operation Migration tracks the distribution of whooping cranes in the eastern migratory population.  In mid-December they reported 97 birds (54 males and 43 females) including 47 in Indiana, 7 each in Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee, 11 in Alabama, 3 in Georgia, and 7 in Florida.  Their December 15 map shows 6 of the Florida birds on the Gulf Coast and one solitary bird smack in the middle of the state -- that's our #9.  Of course I think of him as my bird now, and I will track him and worry about him from now on.  Despite the many good organizations dedicated to restoring the crane population, the world is not always a friendly place for whoopers.  Bear, wolves, foxes and, in Florida, bobcats and alligators, are natural predators.  Whoopers have been killed by flying into power lines and shot by teenaged boys..  When you are Jewish, love does not set you free, it loads you up with a burden of care that you schlep around -- the labor of love.

The photo of #9 at the top of this post was taken by my good friend and birder extraordinaire Dalcio Dacaol.  Craig and I scrambled through the weeds and prickly vines in the back yard of a vacant house to take this much less adequate picture.  Still, you can see the real estate being shared by cattle and cranes, and a car on the opposite side of the BTU shows what a small space this actually is.

At the Point

I am writing this on the deck of our rented beach house at Alligator Point, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.  Craig and I come here a few times a year, sometimes with friends and sometimes not.    Winter is the off season, and I haven't seen any other people on the Point the two days we've been here.  I have seen a few dozen dolphins and countless assorted sea birds, including brown pelicans, terns, sanderlings, willets, great blue herons, loons and gulls.  Monarch butterflies stop here in the fall on their way to Mexico, and there are still a fair number who must have decided to stay.  I know I would.

Alligator Point is a narrow spit of land just south of Ochlockonee Bay along Florida's Forgotten Coast.  On a map the Bay looks like someone poked a finger into the shoreline, separating St. Mark's Wildlife Refuge to the north from Bald Point State Park to the south.  Alligator Point attaches to the eastern end of Bald Point and runs westward for eight miles before ending in a bird sanctuary.  There are no stores or restaurants on the Point, only ocean, beach, dune grasses, beach houses, and a two-lane road running from one end to the other.

The closest town is Panacea, just across the Ochlockonee Bay in Wakulla County.  Founded as Smith Springs, the name was changed to Panacea in 1889 to promote the health benefits of the many natural mineral springs that bubbled up from the ground into ponds. The area became a tourist destination with a hotel, baths, pavilions and restaurants.  Unfortunately the double whammy of the Great Depression and a hurricane in 1928 put an end to prosperity and the springs fell into neglect.  Today, according to Wikipedia, "some appear as potholes."

Panacea is now a fishing village with a population of about 950 and a different set of charms.  There is a small IGA, a large bait and tackle shop, a hardware store, and a handful of restaurants serving fish caught the same day.  There are also a fair number of fish markets.  Our favorite is just a walk-in cooler where a few boats bring their daily catch and the guy out front will slice off a chuck of grouper any size you want.

Panacea also boasts the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories which supplies marine creatures to schools and researchers and has an aquarium open to the public.  GSML was founded by environmentalist Jack Rudloe, who is still the Managing Director.  Rudloe is known for many things, including the first live exhibit of the giant sea roach, research on fouling organisms (look it up), and an unlikely correspondence with John Steinbeck in the 1960s. The aquarium is small but fun; it specializes in small invertebrates like starfish and sea pansies.

The nearby town of Sopchoppy is smaller than Panacea but better known because of the world-famous Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin' Festival held annually the second Sunday of April.  In case you don't know, worm grunting is a way of coaxing earthworms to the surface by rubbing a stob with a rooping iron.  (If you still don't know, check out this video.)  Catching worms for bait is one of the major industries in Sopchoppy, the other being the production of tupelo honey.  Tupelo honey comes from the blossoms of a swamp gum that only flowers for a few weeks in the spring, so to make pure tupelo honey you have to set clean hives out into the swamp at exactly the right time.  It is only produced commercially along the Chipola and Apalachicola Rivers.

As I'm typing this, a flotilla of white pelicans is sailing, almost drifting, along the shoreline in front of our house.  It's almost time for a glass of wine on the deck.  Later we'll go to a seafood restaurant that looks out over Ochlockonee Bay.  We hope to get back while there's still enough light to walk down the beach to the bird sanctuary.  I heard that when a Panacea resident was asked by a tourist, "How far is it to Disney World?" he replied "Not far enough."  I can't wait for someone to ask me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7Qro_Gn7Gdg

The Psychic Fair

So yes, I went to the Psychic Fair, "Crossed Over Connections" earlier this month. Barbara Patrone, a prominent local medium and the organizer of the Fair, is also a passionate animal advocate who promised a donation to St. Francis Pet Care if only we would staff a table with information about our cause. So staff a table I did.

Like Mr. Obama, I want to be clear. I do not believe in communication from the afterlife for the simple reason that I do not believe in an afterlife. However, after meeting the mediums (oh, how I want to say "media") at Crossed Over Connections, I am convinced that these people are not putting anything over on anyone. They totally believe in their psychic powers and their ability to use them for good. So what we have here are some well-meaning people selling a service roughly akin to chiropracty on the bogus-meter with the best of intentions and with extremely satisfied customers. I refuse to fault them for this.

The Psychic Fair charged visitors $5.00 at the door. Once inside, you could purchase a 20 minute session with the psychic of your choice for only $35. Normally psychics charge by the hour at much higher rates, so you can get a quickie at a big discount. There were eight or nine mediums doing discount readings and equally many vendors selling related products like scented oils, jewelry and crystals.

St Francis Pet Care was offered all proceeds from a raffle to be held the end of the second day of the Fair. Initially this did not look promising. The raffle items provided consisted of three unfortunate T-shirts, an ancient hardcover cookbook with the original price sticker still on it ($3.95), a handful of used books on random topics, and a certificate good for a free 15-minute phone reading. However, several of the participating psychics stopped by the table to donate books they had authored. Apparently psychics are prolific, because we soon accumulated a small library on spiritualism. People bought raffle tickets.

As with medicine or librarianship, there are many specializations within the psychic domain. A psychic is anyone who has perception beyond the traditional five senses, for example, the ability to predict the future. A medium is a psychic who can communicate with spirits. All mediums are psychics, but not all psychics are mediums. A clairvoyant is a kind of cut-rate medium -- she can receive communications from spirits but can't answer back. A shaman on the other hand is a medium on steroids. While plain old mediums are passive conduits for spirit communications, a shaman can actively enter an altered state to find particular spirit helpers. Psychics who practice shamanic healing solicit compassionate human and/or animal spirits to address imbalances in your spiritual energy that can make you unwell. You do not have to be psychic to practice Reiki, a form of energy healing, although many psychics do. Some psychics specialize in oracle card readings with fairy cards or angel cards. There is more, but you get the idea. There is a lot of action at the Psychic Fair.

Most of the mediums at this Fair could communicate with animals as well as humans. In Bridge Between Worlds: My Life as a Psychic Medium (one of the books donated to our raffle) there is a whole chapter devoted to "our pets on the other side", mostly dogs wanting to let their owners know they're waiting by the Rainbow Bridge. Also at this event, all of the psychics were women, and many of them seemed to have a handicap of some kind, from obesity to blindness, suggesting some co-occurrence of disability and psychic ability.

Directly across the aisle from my little raffle table there was a gorgeous display of crystals and polished stones. I asked Idania, co-owner of the unassumingly-named Rock 'n Glass, if her minerals had any special properties. "They are whatever you want them to be, " she replied. "They can be energizing, or calming, or healing, or they can just look nice on a shelf." She was a veritable Wikipedia of information about every specimen I pointed to. She and her partner hand-pick every stone.

At the opposite end of the room a woman named Gail was giving computer-assisted aura picture readings. I don't know if she was using WinAura or some other program, but it generated a color aura display showing all seven chakras which she would then interpret.

Scott was a celebrity guest of sorts. He was not a psychic, but he had crossed to the other side and returned to tell the tale. He was at the Fair to sell his book about the experience, I Was There - It's Real. He donated a raffle copy which I skimmed with interest. In 2009 he suffered a motorcycle accident that broke nearly every bone in his lower body and put him into a coma for 25 days. During that time he had a near-death experience that brought him to the edge of the afterlife. The experience transformed his beliefs and allowed him to forgive the man who had sexually abused him as a child. All fine and good, but I wanted to know if he could forgive the uninsured driver of the pickup that crashed into him. Did he ever apologize? Scott smiled shyly. "The driver was in his 80s and demented. I don't think he even remembers anything happened." Scott had about 45 surgeries to repair the damage and still has a few to look forward to. Whether he crossed or not, he's a sweet and amazingly brave man.

I liked the Psychic Fair. I don't think I will go to another one, but I do want to find Rock 'n Glass to pick out a couple of Christmas presents.

A man walks into a bar

For my birthday, something for all of you. Smile and forget the election.

So, a sphere walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender says, "I'm sorry, but we don't serve spheres here." The disgruntled sphere walks outside, but then gets an idea and performs Dahn surgery upon himself. He walks into the bar, and the bartender, who does not recognize him but thinks he looks familiar (or at least locally similar) and asks, "Aren't you that sphere that just came in here?" "No, I'm a frayed knot."

Ok, I admit I don't have a clue what that's about. But I know if I did, it would be funny. That's the great thing about "a man walks into a bar" jokes. I particularly like the "we don't serve your type around here" ones. A ham sandwich walks into a bar. The bartender says, Sorry, we don't serve food here.

A font walks into a bar. The bartender says, Sorry, we don't serve your type here.

C, E-flat and G walk into a bar. The bartender says, "sorry, but we don't serve minors." So E-flat leaves, and C and G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished and G is out flat. F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough.

A neutrino walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'm sorry, we don't serve neutrinos here." The neutrino says, "That's all right, I'm just passing through."

Argon walks into a bar. The bartender says, Sorry but we don't serve noble gases here!' Argon doesn't react.

Remember when scientists briefly thought they had recorded neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light? I loved this one: The bartender says, Sorry, we don't serve faster-than-light particles here. A neutrino walks into a bar.

René Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender asks him if he wants a beer, Descartes says "I think not" and disappears.

A man walks into a bar holding an alligator. He asks the bartender, "Do you serve lawyers here?" The bartender says, "Yes, we do!" "Great" the man says. "Give me a beer, and I'll have a lawyer for my alligator."

My favorite bar jokes are short, but a couple of longies are classics:

A duck walks into a bar and says to the bartender "Got any grapes?" The bartender says "No, I don't have any grapes." The duck walks out, sorely disappointed. The next day, the duck walks into the bar and asks "Got any grapes?" and gets the same answer. The day after that, the duck walks into the bar, and again asks the bartender, "Got any grapes?" The bartender is getting annoyed and says, "No, and if you come back in here tomorrow and ask me again, I will nail your bill to the bar!" The duck frowns, turns around, and walks out of the bar. So the next day, the duck walks into the bar, and asks the bartender "Got any nails?" The bartender, kind of surprised, says "Well, no." "So," the duck says "got any grapes?"

A man and dog walk into a bar. The man bets the bartender a free drink that he can make his dog talk. The bartender agrees. So the man asks his dog, "What is on top of a house?" The dog says, "Roof!" The man asks his dog, "How does sandpaper feel?" The dog replies, "Ruff!" The man asks his dog, "Who was the best hitting outfielder of all time?" The dog replies, "Ruth!" The bartender throws them both out of the bar. The dog looks at the man and says, "What, I should have said Ted Williams?"

Chores

Born smack dab in the middle of the Baby Boom, I grew up during the Golden Age of TV Westerns. By the end of the 1960s more than 100 westerns had aired on the networks and I probably saw most of them. Before I was out of grade school I could sing the entire theme songs to dozens of cowboy shows. Unfortunately, I still can.

     Cheyenne, Cheyenne, where will you be camping tonight?
     Lonely man, Cheyenne, will your heart stay free and light?

     Have Gun - Will Travel reads the card of a man
     A knight without armor in a savage land

     Sugarfoot, Sugarfoot, 
     Easy lopin', cattle ropin' Sugarfoot

My favorite shows were the ones with the youngest, handsomest cowboys, like Bronco (1958-62), Sugarfoot (57-61), and Cheyenne (55-63), but I also liked Maverick (57-62) and Bat Masterson (58-61) because they were funny. Rin Tin Tin (54-59) made me fester with jealosy because the star was just some dumb kid who had the great good luck to be orphaned and adopted by a cavalry troop. My Friend Flicka (56-57) was even worse because the dumb kid lived in Wyoming and had his own horse. I wanted a horse like Flicka and a dog like Rin Tin Tin. I also wanted a father like Lucas McCain in the Rifleman (58-63).

I didn't realize it at the time, but the vast majority of these series were set in the 1870s and early 1880s, as though the great American West had only one good decade. Many of the protagonists were Civil War veterans starting second careers, like Paladin in Have Gun Will Travel (57-63), a Union officer who became a mercenary, or Lucas McCain, a Union officer who became a rancher, or Seth Adams on Wagon Train (57-62), a Union officer who became a wagon master, or Reese Bennett on Laredo (65-67), a Union officer who joined the Texas Rangers, or Gil Favor on Rawhide (59-65), a Confederate officer who became a trail boss. Bonanza (59-73), an exception, was actually set during the Civil War, which occasionally contributed to the plot, as when Little Joe stirred up trouble by dating the daughter of a Confederate sympathizer.

We may remember TV westerns as shoot-em-ups, but in fact, unlike western movies or contemporary crime shows, the genre generally eschewed violence. The need to resort to force showed a failure of wit, and if fighting was necessary, guns were the last resort. Good guys preferred fist fights to gunslinging. Even the Rifleman, who according to Wikipedia managed to dispatch 120 bad guys during its five year run, preferred to solve problems peacefully. Westerns were also intensely moral. Cowboy ethics included justice, fairness, racial tolerance, honesty, integrity and courage. You could do worse than be a cowboy.

I absorbed a lot from watching westerns. By the 3rd grade I knew I wanted to ride horses, live in Wyoming, and right wrongs wherever I found them. But most of all, I knew I wanted to have chores. There were not a lot of children on TV westerns, but every single one of them had chores. Every morning young boys and girls gathered firewood, lit the hearth, pumped water, milked cows, tended livestock, gathered eggs, and generally made themselves useful before stuffing a chunk of bread in their pockets and walking several miles to school. I knew I could be a better person if only I had chores. I begged my mother, who struggled mightily but failed to come up with anything satisfying. She said I could set the table for dinner, but we rarely had family dinners and that wasn't a before-school chore anyway. Neither was emptying waste baskets or cleaning my room. A real chore had to be necessary, it had to be physical, and it had to be done before breakfast.

Half a century later, I still don't ride or live in Wyoming, but here at Itchy Dog Farm I finally have chores. Every morning I feed the dogs and cats and fill their water bowls. I free the chickens from the Chicken Palace, toss out scratch for their breakfast, and check their water. I feed and medicate the equines, fill the water trough, and make a slurry of moistened alfalfa cubes and beet pulp to supplement their next meal. Only then am I free to make my own breakfast and get to work.

I'm not saying that's why I love Itchy Dog Farm, but it doesn't hurt.

Spidering

Craig and I went spidering today. We took a guided walk through the Prairie Creek Preserve led by local spidermen Jon Reiskind and Mark Stowe.

Jon Reiskind was for many years chair of our county Democratic Party, and the handful of people on the tour that I recognized ranged from left-leaning to left-flat-out-fallen-down. Somebody should study this. Is arachnophilia a marker for progressive political views? Or is it only tree-hugging liberals that will happily spend a Saturday morning tromping through mosquito infested woods looking for spider webs? Maybe Republicans do their spidering online with their smart phones while waiting for stock prices to update.

I have always respected spiders. I will not kill one, and I let them live in my house at the corners of the ceilings, catching anything that flies their way. On the other hand, I am not a big fan of fangs and hairy legs. That tension makes spidering more of an adventure than, say, going birding or painting the dining room. It makes me feel vaguely virtuous.

Spiders are among the most ancient of creatures. The first true spiders have been identified in Carboniferous rocks more than 300 million years old and apparently they were quite similar to the most primitive spider order today. Jon told us rather sadly that no spider webs have survived in the fossil record. All spiders have 8 legs and abdominal spinnerets for silk-making. Most have 8 eyes although a few species have 6 eyes. Spider blood is pale blue because oxygen is bound to copper rather than iron, and they use hydraulic pressure to extend their legs.

The first thing Mark showed us was the tube of a purse web spider. The female makes a tube out of silk and disguises it with bits of leaf and mold so it looks just like a tendril or bit of vine. The spider stays inside the tube and waits for her prey to alight on the outside. Then she stabs it with her fangs and pulls it into the tube for dinner. Mark said once we recognized one tube, we'd be surprised how often we'd see them all around us. I haven't stopped staring at the bases of trees since.

The wolf spider is one of my favorites. They do not build webs but hunt on the ground. When my kids were young we used to go outside at night and shine flashlights across the grass. The spiders' eyes reflect the light, and the lawn lights up with hundreds of glowing pin-points. The wolf spider is the official state spider of South Carolina, the only state to have an official state spider.

The most common spider in these parts is the golden orb weaver, called banana spiders in Florida for reasons I have never understood. There are a godzillion golden orb weavers and no banana plants in Florida that I know of. They build beautiful yellow webs and will eat and reweave half of their webs every night. When you look at a web there is always a neater and a rattier half.

The spiney spider, also called they spineybacked orb weaver, is also common. These are compact little guys that are white with black spots and have either black or red spikes on their backs. We have a spiney spider right by our front porch. In fact, we have all the spiders that we saw at the Preserve right here; perhaps the next spider tour should be at Itchy Dog Farm.

There is, however, something to be said for the field trip. Prairie Creek Preserve, managed by the Alachua Conservation Trust, is home to the Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery, a green burial ground. Our group was supposed to meet at a trailhead some distance from the cemetery but we missed the sign and ended up in the cemetery itself. The cemetery is maintained as conservation land and any proceeds from the burials go to purchasing and conserving more land. Nothing but a message board marks the cemetery grounds; there are no fences or paths or headstones, just woods and grassland. Looking for more purse web spiders, I almost literally stumbled upon a grave. It was new enough to still be mounded and covered on top with fresh pine needles. Someone had lovingly planted native pinecone ginger around the perimeter. A marker about the size of a silver dollar recorded the occupant's name. I have up until now been enthusiastic about green burial, but I thought this grave seemed lonely and vulnerable out there in the woods with the spiders and bugs. Craig, who does not much think about burial, said it looked quiet and peaceful. We will go back there sometime soon to bird.

(I did not take these photos, I got them off the Web.)

Andrea's story, or, How we came to have a House Chicken

There are many mysteries at Itchy Dog Farm, but what everybody wants to know is, how did we come to have a House Chicken? This is actually a story of suffering and triumph. I thought it would be a good way to start off The Blog at Itchy Dog Farm.

Craig and I have had backyard chickens for several years now. Our custom is to get day-old chicks, or "peepers" as I call them, at the Feed Store each spring. Even in Florida its too cold for them to be outside, so we start them in a galvanized tub with a heat lamp in the living room. In the evenings we socialize them by holding one or two while we watch TV for an hour or so.

The Feed Store gets three or four different breeds of chicks every week, and its fun to study the schedule and decide which we want to try out. This year we selected four Brahmas, two light and two dark. Brahmas are heavier birds than most, good for both meat and eggs, and one of only a few breeds to have feathers on their feet. By coincidence, we had also discovered Breaking Bad years behind everyone else in the world, and were watching our way through a marathon of Netflix episodes. We named the four peepers after female characters in Breaking Bad -- Lydia, Andrea, Skyler and Holly. I would have named one Jane, after Jesse's girlfriend who Walter White allowed to OD, but we already have a Rhode Island Red hen named Jane.

When our peepers get big enough we shuffle them between dog crates in the yard and in the Chicken Palace, and finally they graduate to free range chicks that sleep in the chicken palace with the big chickens at night. Tragically, one night some varmint got into the Palace (we still don't know exactly how, although now it is sealed up tighter than a can of spam) and ate (most of) Lydia, Skyler and Holly, leaving very disgusting carnage behind. Everything likes chicken.

Our rooster Big Red and the larger hens were unscathed, as was Andrea, who we found tucked under a board against the opposite wall from her sisters' bodies. All the chickens were spooked, but Andrea was super-spooked and refused to return to the chicken palace at night. We couldn't think of anything else to do but move one of the dog crates onto our screen porch at the back of the house. Andrea moved into the dog crate, retiring there every night after the other chickens settled into the palace.

At dusk Andrea and the other chickens would gather just outside the Chicken Compound, until some chicken signal was given and all but Andrea would go through the Compound yard to roost in the Palace. Craig would go out and latch them in, and Andrea would follow him back to our own front door where she'd cluck around until it was time to pick her up and take her around back to the screen porch. At some point we figured, might as well just let her in the front door. So we opened the door, and she strutted in, looked around, and hopped up on the back of the sofa.

So that's become our nightly routine. We tuck the other chickens in to roost, Andrea struts in through the front door, and we all have quality family time together until its time to take her to her crate and go to bed.

And that's how we came to have a house chicken.