Lagniappe: Lifting Chickens

I have new chickens, layers eight weeks old. When they were chicks living under lights in the mudroom, I made a practice of picking them up one at a time, those that would let me. And now when I enter the poultry yard, I feel like a one-man midway at the chicken fair, birds standing in line waiting to be picked up. No good can come of lifting chickens, I can almost hear my dad thinking that, though he's gone now, too. And yet the birds churr and cluck, and I leave the yard happy.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, More Scenes from the Rural Life

This is indelibly in my mind's eye ... all those chickens lining up for their turn to be lifted. I laugh out loud every time I read it.