The Price Of Eggs

At Orion Magazine, Christopher Solomon recounts the life and death of Muffy, a Buff Orpington chicken seriously wounded by a neighbor’s dog. Using a weary, yet stoic approach and wry humor, Solomon attempts to nurse Muffy back to health. As he does so, he considers his uneasy relationship with the land he stewards and the farmyard lives he’s become responsible for.

Here I must confess that my sympathy for the chicken was not unpolluted. I am at best a reluctant landowner, more in love with the views the land provides than the unceasing work required to steward even my smallest curve of earth. I don’t find the work ennobling. During chores, my eyes always wander to the horizon. I want things to go easy. The hen’s struggle had disrupted the quiet ticking of the place. Her injury had breached the unspoken contract between us, upon which my laissez-faire philosophy depended. I was newer to life in the country, then, and didn’t understand that a barnyard isn’t a place but a series of unforeseen emergencies—irrigation leaks and downed fences and sudden illnesses. Something, living or not, is always breaking. Life is a daily war against entropy.