Quack
Today my son was taking care of one of the remaining dogs out in the front yard when he saw an old man walking down the street and behind him, about twenty yards, was a duck. No, not a chicken, a duck.

My son called to us and we went to the front and I looked out the window and my wife looked out the front door and the old man caught site of her and, from across the street, shouted
"What the heck is that!?" and pointed behind him. My wife replied "I think it belongs to the brown house on the corner there."

To which the man paused and pointed down the street and said, again shouting from across the street "Oh you think it belongs to the Viet Cong down there?!"

My wife paused, covering her mouth with her hand to stifle an incredulous laugh at the man announcing this to the entire street. She composed herself and told him that it belonged to the family on the OTHER corner, the one with the American flag hanging out front, but she didn't think that they were home. The old man nodded and kept going down the street.
Meanwhile, the duck's attention had been drawn to my wife talking out the door and my son standing on the front steps, and began to head toward our house. My wife and son came back inside, bringing the small "house dog" with them and my son went to the back of the house to observe the single living "outside dog" who was chained to a tree. My wife went on with whatever she was doing in the kitchen and I went back to my office. Not two minutes had passed before my son was calling again.
The duck had gone to our back yard and was chasing our dog around the tree it was tied to. The dog was frightened. Eventually the duck got our dog so wrapped up she caught her sizeable water tub on her chain and tipped it over. I think this was all part of the duck's master plan because after my son proceeded to refill the water tub the duck jumped in and began to bathe. Eventually it went on it's way, having gotten what it came for.

Our dog looked and must have felt so used.

This duck is a tame duck that lives on the corner and is owned, not by the VC, but by a white family that has lived here longer than us and speaks with no accent. We did not not file a report with the poultry police, but I'm sure somebody did, the way the citizens are on eggshells around here, ha ha. That old man looked scared enough...almost enough.

Wakefield

With a Capital T and that Rhymes With C and that stands for Chicken!
I should tell you that I live here in Wakefield, in the North Central part of the country. Wakefield has about 2,000 residents. We are part of that iconic rural America, filled with patriots and honest people who would give you the shirt off their backs. The kind of place you don't have to lock your doors at night and your neighbor looks out for you. I'm afraid to report that out here in fly-over land we are just as jaded, racist, cruel, dishonest, unfaithful and two-faced as any big city dwellers. One correct stereotype here in Wakefield is that many people in rural areas are not the brightest lights around. That much is true. There are some colossal morons in this town and in many others of its kind.
I think that there aren't, proportionally, any more stupid people here than in any major city but the difference is out here you don't need intelligence or competence to succeed. The vast majority of competent and intelligent individuals know better than to stick around places like Wakefield so the people who, in the city, would tell idiots "This is crap, get it out of here, are you serious with this?!" do not exist. It's the people who wouldn't survive as leaders elsewhere that run the small towns of America. They sell cars, publish newspapers, they run for Mayor. As a result we have gems like the following article, which reached my doorstep on Thursday in the weekly paper. I have changed some names, but this is an actual story from the newspaper. I didn't make this up:

Concerns aired about city chickens
The possibility that some Wakefield residents are illegally keeping chickens in residential basements and garages has city officials crying foul.

Janice Fellows told fellow council members Monday that she has had people tell her that they have heard chickens around town.

Mayor Stan Flatulenzo responded that he has seen chickens within city limits.

Fellows said that she is concerned because of the health risks that poultry-related diseases pose for humans. She asked Police Chief Ryan Folger what his department can do if someone sees or hears chickens within the city.

Folger said that he can knock on a door and ask the resident to remove the poultry, and issue a ticket for the ordinance violation if he sees the chicken. However, if the poultry is concealed on the property, perhaps in a basement or utility building, he would need to establish probable cause before seeking a search warrant. People reporting poultry violations would have to agree to be identified as witnesses in order to obtain the search warrant, the chief said, something that not all people are willing to do.

"If they (poultry) are indoors, what are you going to do?" said Flatulenzo. The mayor said that police need to do their best at enforcing the ordinance.
Fellows said that while she didn't want poultry to be kept in residential sheds and garages, she especially didn't want to see poultry moved inside houses, where they would be even more of a health hazard. County Community Health officials will be contacted about suspected cases of in-town poultry, council members decided.
For more on this story, please check this week's paper.


Can you believe this? I would love to see the Mayor at the next council meeting pounding his fist on the desk saying "Dammit, this is a serious PROBLEM! We have to put an end to the in-town poultry! By god I'm going to make it the goal of this administration for as long as I'm Mayor, to protect the City of Wakefield's residents against the health risks posed by IN-TOWN POULTRY!"
The truth is we have a large community of Hmong people in Wakefield. These are the people who are keeping chickens. I have not personally seen any chickens rampaging through town, as the Mayor has, nor have I heard any. I do hear some cows from time to time that live on the other side of the grain elevator downtown. I get the feeling that some white neighbors are calling the cops about the poultry in their Hmong neighbor's houses to give them trouble.
The way I see it, these people, in their homeland (Laos, I think)probably used to raise chickens all the time and slaughter them themselves without problem but now the city thinks they are all going to kill themselves with chickenshit and salmonella apparently. Who the hell keeps chickens for the fun of it? Let them have their chickens. I understand that having them in the house might be a bit much, as the droppings can release ammonia, but keep'em in a shed or garage or whatever.
I live on the south end of town and my kids' elementary school is on the north end, a total distance of maybe 1.5 miles, maybe, and it's a straight line, one street, the whole way. I take the kids to school and I drive straight through downtown on the same street and I'm closer to the aforementioned cow pasture than I am to the school! Nobody complains about hearing cows around town. A chicken walking around town doesn't bother me.
People who have them in their basements (which I don't believe)know what the risks are.

I wonder what the fine is? Buck? Buck buck?

That's it for tonight.
-Wakefield

The First
My first actual entry into this, a blog, was simply the letter "I". It was at the second following that keystroke that my son came in to tell me I had to come outside because something was wrong with one of our dogs. Something was indeed wrong, the dog was dead.
I had wanted to plan my whole first entry out in detail, start things off with a bang, be clever and witty and fill it with biting humor and sarcasm.
It's late now though, and I'm tired, and I have to get up early in the morning so I'm afraid this will have to do.
We think it's possible that one of our neighbors poisoned our dog. There's a cliffhanger for you. Whoever you are.

Wakefield