Unlike a dog or a cat, licking or purring to show their love and appreciation for human affection, or even a goat or a sheep nuzzling up expecting to be petted, over the years from Gladys I have gotten expressions of her gratitude only when I have given her a bath. She truly enjoys the water, and while bathing, she seems to lay aside her normal haughty behavior to savor the moment at hand.
The ritual begins after I turn on the hose and she realizes what is coming. She rushes up to me and I begin hosing her down. The process commences with her tossing her head back and forth in the stream of water, all the while gulping a few drinks, or I should say “sips,” as the flow proceeds. From that stage onward, we turn to the wings, which she flaps back and forth, trying to make sure that I get water underneath when she elevates them. I can sense her elation during this part of the process.
Thence, we move on to the full body wash, including the web feet. Gladys likes to be clean all over, and in the current spate of hot, humid days, she sees the bath as having a cooling off function as well. Henry, on the other hand, eschews wash time, preferring to keep himself clean without my assistance.
Whereas Gladys consistently is “in it for herself,” her motto being “what can you do for me now,” Henry is more social in nature. He thrives on being conversational, honking away, confident that I am comprehending every syllable that comes from his baritone beak. As I often have said previously, he is a “prince of a gander.”
Despite being drakes themselves, Quack I and Quack II decline the opportunity to share in Gladys’s bath, I am sure much to her delight, if not their chagrin. Gladys does not like to share anything, especially a bath which she sees as for her sole pleasure.
The Quacks run in the other direction when the water starts pouring out of the hose, and I could not force them to bathe, even if I tried. They are much too nimble for me to be chasing them around the barnyard with hose in hand, water spilling everywhere. To attempt to bathe them would be an exercise in futility; so much for the cliché about things taking to one another “like a duck to water.”
As this stratified hosing procedure progresses, the chickens scatter as far as possible from the waterflow. They do not want to get wet, giving added confirmation to the wisdom of the ancient adage about being “mad as a wet hen.” As long as they are laying eggs, I am taking the position that they can manage their own cleanliness.
They are nice chickens, friendly to the point of getting under my feet, each hoping to be the beneficiary of any dropped feed, but during Gladys’s bath time, they voluntarily exile themselves to Siberia.
Gladys’s own laying season came later than usual this year, perhaps due to the prolonged cold weather, and it left earlier. She has forgotten the lessons I tried to teach her about how to build a nest and how to incubate potential goslings. I have found with many geese I have fostered and raised that geese like to be clean, therefore in that respect, Gladys’s behavior is in line with the norm.
Today, equilibrium is the best word to use to describe the various interrelationships, likes and dislikes, food choices and behavior patterns at play together in the barnyard. The residents have learned to establish their own balance, traditionally termed a “pecking order,” with Gladys as the Alpha Fowl, Henry as Beta, and the others following therefrom in Greek alphabetical order, perhaps that is why Gladys relishes her bath as a sign of her superiority over the great unwashed masses.
