Chicken Ticklin'

Mouse had a field trip at a local creamery today and siblings were welcome to come. Baboo was so, so excited to see the cows , it’s all she talked about for days. She kept asking when we were going to see “MY cows”. We’re going through a possessive phase.

The farm was in an area I don’t know very well, and despite mapquest AND the damn GPS in the car, we got lost. Several times. I was frustrated and angry and very disappointed that the girls might miss the greatly anticipated trip to the farm.

As I’m swearing up a storm after I get stuck in the wrong lane behind a truck getting onto the interstate going the WRONG direction and I can’t turn around, Baboo kept asking me “What wong Mama? Where MY cows?” and Mouse sighed dejectedly in the back seat. I think I told them to shut up. Not my finest moment, I’m ashamed to say.

Anyway, a kind parent from Mouse’s class and a sweet waitress at Denny’s helped me get there, and apparently there was a road closure on the route that everyone else used, so the tour started late anyway. We didn’t miss much, thankfully.

We’re walking in the spring sunshine on a beautiful farm, feeling the earth getting ready to explode with life; picturing the farmer’s market specialties that will be available in a few weeks, admiring the calves and taking in the scent of hay and animal. There are a bunch of free range chickens running around (I’m in some kind of chicken heaven, I love chickens) the farm as they have a coop as well, and Baboo keeps trying to catch them. Some of them get close enough for her to touch and she just roars with laughter, which is a bit disruptive to the tour. I took her aside to tell her that she can’t touch the chickens; that they need to just walk around and eat bugs.

She turns to me, very seriously and says “Mama. I don’t want to touch the chickens, I want to tickle them”.

I tried to tell her that chickens don't really want to be tickled, but well, I had a hard time actually saying that because I was too busy cracking up, along with a few other parents around me. Oh well.