A Lack of Chickens

(Shout out to Mele Gaddini for unblocking me from writing this blog post by sharing her struggles with imaginary chickens. Rather, the struggles with a lack of them!)

As I’ve been saying for a while, the local wildlife probably wishes we’d commit to the farmette part of our farmette-with-Internet and buy some chickens already. I’ve begun to suspect that the local flora’s listening to their discussions. Since the vegetation isn’t more scared of me than I am of it¹, it’s been doling out encouragement in its usual nefarious mysterious plant-y way.

Last year, I spent Mother’s Day gardening. It was a beautiful, not-too-hot day, the pollen count was surprisingly reasonable, and I had a well-scoped solo project: remove all the weeds in the strip of river rocks by the back steps, and set up buckets with tomato, cucumber, and pepper plants. Most of the weeds were English ivy; pulling them out was fun!

I didn’t see the poison ivy interwoven with the English ivy. The sap soaked through my gloves (despite their having goatskin palms) and shirt, and when I swiped hair out of my eyes and crammed it back under my hat, I thought the dampness on the sleeve covering the back of my arm was just overspray from having washed out the planting buckets.

Since that incident, I upgraded my gear. I got new gloves and gardening gauntlets (which cover up to the middle of my biceps) that I could slip on under my gloves, and long-sleeved shirts with sleeves just loose enough to wear over the gauntlets. I swapped my gardening jeans for overalls, which fit me … disturbingly well.² I found a headband that was not only comfortable for me to wear by itself, but also to wear under a hat.³

Y’all know I’ve been enjoying gardening again.

The week of April 19th, I blew out two pairs of gloves working in the rocks at the front of the house. After the second incident (that Friday), I also believed I’d gotten bitten by a spider beneath my right glove, right where the gauntlet stopped. By Sunday morning, my wrist developed a nasty lump. It subsided by the following Monday, so I didn’t think it was a big deal. I apologized to every spider I saw, and was generally unconcerned that they looked at me like I’d lost my mind, because I’m used to making that kind of first impression on people⁴, so why not also spiders?

The next Friday morning, I was sitting in urgent care explaining to the nurse practitioner that oh, no, I feel fine! Really! Except, uhm, I have this now open wound on my wrist that won’t heal and I have what look like other spider bites emerging all over my body, including in places that do not get anywhere near the sun even when I wear a swimsuit, which I totally don’t while I’m gardening.

My GP gave me the same look after I finished the prescribed antibiotics, and the “spider bites”⁵ were still emerging.

I didn’t finish the steroids until today, so I spent this Mother’s Day gardening in Sims 4. No one caught on fire, was eaten by a cowplant, attacked by a bunny that chose violence, or was abducted by aliens. It was quiet. Peaceful.

So, I probably should take my GP’s advice and hire someone who isn’t a chaos magnet knows what they’re doing⁶ to do the hand weeding, and get some chickens to scratch the I need to do stuff outdoors itch. I’ve done just fine with chickens in Sims 4. What could possibly go wr–

I shouldn’t even think that, should I?

1. Yep, I’ve read The Overstory. I loved it. ↩︎
2. My grandfather lived in overalls. ↩︎
3. A JUNK headbands Big Bang Lite. I wound up liking it so much I bought another one to wear while I’m cooking. ↩︎
4. When I’m not blending in with the wallpaper, or hiding behind the ficus in the corner by the emergency exit, so to speak. ↩︎
5. Our mutual best guess: I jabbed myself with a piece of broken poison ivy left over from when my husband used chemical warfare against it after last year’s incident and picked up a staph infection plus just enough urushiol to send my immune system into OH NO WE ARE NOT DOING THIS AGAIN MISSY freakout mode. I was today years old when I learned that stuff can linger for FIVE YEARS. ↩︎
6. She actually said “a professional”. My husband said “chaos magnet”. ↩︎