Chickens

Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens; Phil Harris, vocals

We had a string of dogs out on the farm. In no particular order, we had Mike, Blacky, Max, Sam, Buddy and Hofer. Too many cats to mention found a home on our front stoop. Some highlights were: Fluffy, Gleason, O.J., Bertha, Duke, Calico, Morris, Grandma, Snoopy, Twerp, Lars, George, Boris, Isaac and Gray Kitty. Other than dogs, cats and cows, the only other livestock we husbanded on our prairie plot were chickens.

Accumulatively, as I recall, we probably only had poultry in our coop for about five or six years. I remember, when D. and I were four and five years old, that we would get to go along into town when Mom and Dad purchased a box of baby chicks. We would sit in the back seat and poke our fingers through the holes and feel the soft yellowness and thrill at the chorus of peeps that emanated from inside the cardboard.

By the way, we didn’t specifically invest in our chickens for the egg part. We got them for the Shake ‘N Bake part. And we helped.

Two years ago, for his birthday, my nephew N. made a request for forty baby chickens. He got them about a month before his birthday. N. likes the egg part. And for a couple of years now he has provided the Christmas eggs for all of our Christmas egg needs. One of his chickens, Helen, likes N.’s dad, my brother-in-law D. Ever since she stood next to him as he shot at a poultry-life threatening varmint, she has continually expressed her appreciation for his heroic antics. Mostly by rubbing against his boot.

Lord knows what I was looking for on the world wide interweb when I found Phil Harris singing “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens”. I never knew the emptiness of my own sorry life until I heard Phil Harris’ band laid down the swingiest, swankiest groove that ever proclaimed the phat and funky nightlife of chickens.

Credits: To Phil Harris, for being the hippest cat in the room, every time. Thank you for Balloo, Little John and Thomas O’Malley.