Lucy the Trans-Rooster and other Fowl Anecdotes

.: 2022

[00:00:00] Jeff Nesbitt: Hey, thank you for tuning in the following is an episode from Ramble on the road, the companion podcast to Ramble by the. This is just a sneak peek and there's a lot more where that came from. So if you enjoy this episode today, and you'd like to become a member of the Patreon group to help support the show and get access to all these bonus features, extra episodes and merch head on over to RamblebytheRiver dot com.

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[00:00:44] And it will really help me spread the show around and it will also help you to catch all the new episodes. Good enough about that. Let's get to the show. You can find RamblebytheRiver on social media, on Facebook and Instagram at RamblebytheRiver and on Twitter at Ramble river. [00:01:00] Any of this information and anything about the show can be found at Ramble by the River dot com without further ado, please enjoy this special presentation of Ramble on the road.

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[00:01:26] That was a very nice send off.

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[00:01:34] Here we go.

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[00:01:55] And of course this little blonde girl is Amelia. and I mean, it's [00:02:00] seven 30 in the morning and she's standing there with a Popsicle in her underwear. This girl loves summertime. what she's been doing lately is stealing popsicles. And they're the healthy kind. I mean, as healthy as a Popsicle could really be. But you know, they're the outshine I think is the brand they're made out of fruit. They're good. They're actually delicious. Uh, we've been buying these popsicles and she just goes in and takes 'em and I'm actually kind of fine with it.

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[00:02:43] Oh my God. Holy shit. Oversized load going around the corner, entering the tunnel. They're taking about one and a half lanes and I'm in a big truck. So I didn't have a lot of room inches, inches on either [00:03:00] side, scary stuff. Oh man. What a day? It's beautiful out here. I'm pretty excited to go to work. It's been a long weekend.

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[00:03:30] I got a lot of good quality time with the girls. The boy was off fishing most of the time, so I didn't see him much, but I saw him a little bit, mostly just girl time.

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[00:04:00] Not after setting a precedent of so much high quality sound, it just didn't seem.

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[00:04:34] It was a small chicken, and appeared to be a hen. So they scooped her up and foolishly brought her back to our house to introduce her to our chickens.

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[00:04:59] [00:05:00] We all remember talking rain. It was in everybody's grandma's pantry and it tasted like garbage. I remember being, uh, 13 going to Mo lawn at my grandpa's house and they brought me outta talking rain. I spit it back in their face. It was disgusting. How could you, possibly think this would be good?

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[00:05:43] It's delicious. I still don't drink the plain shit. That sounds like a, like a lunatic thing to do. just plain water with bubbles in it kind of a person would do such a thing. Not me

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[00:05:59] [00:06:00] The pastique quite refreshing, little Lemone in your life. Sure.

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[00:06:37] after about six months of that, we started hearing these kind of stunted rumblings from the coop. A little,

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[00:07:12] And you're gonna have a bunch of jizzy eggs and a bunch of hens with no tail feathers on their asses, bare ass hens, and flat Gizzy eggs. You don't want that. That's not why you have chickens. I mean, sure. You get a delightful wake up call every morning at 4:59 AM. And sure the whole neighborhood appreciates that because how else are we gonna know?

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[00:07:55] Uh, I see a flare. Oh, do we have an accident? What do we [00:08:00] got here? What do we got? There's a police officer. A boat, oh my God.

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[00:08:22] Geez, Louise coastal life. Huh?

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[00:08:30] So when we started hearing Lucy doing all these Kaka doodle dos, we just assumed, oh, we called this one wrong. She's a rooster after all kind of strange though. She still isn't very big. She's still kind of a small bird. didn't think much of it. Maybe she's a Bantom which is like a smaller version of a chicken.

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[00:09:01] And months went by and the chicken continued to, to cock doodle do as best she could, which wasn't great. She just didn't have the power. I mean, we've had some roosters that could fucking belt it. Big red, big red was just insane. The way he could Kakadu will do really a beautiful bird, truly a beautiful bird.

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[00:09:34] But most importantly, he could just fucking rip when it came to Kaka doodle doing, I mean, everybody knew the sun was about to rise. It's this chicken did its fucking job, but Lucy, not so much. Lucy was kind of a bitch when it came to Kaka doodle doing, and I can't hold that against her. She didn't have the frame for it.

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[00:10:02] Meanwhile, we got this raccoon issue. These neighborhood raccoons are ripping our chickens through the fence. Traumatizing my wife. If you've never seen a chicken, trying to be pulled through a fence, we're talking chicken wire fence, one inch, one and a half inch something small. You can't fit a chicken through a one and a half inch hole, but you can try and try.

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[00:10:56] I think we had like a dozen chickens and little by little, the [00:11:00] raccoons picked him off. Neighbor dogs picked him off. Uh, our own dog probably has got a few if I really think about it, but down to two chickens, Lucy, the transsexual rooster

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[00:11:41] And then one day suddenly I looked in the coop and I noticed on the ground, I see an egg, huh? That's interesting that red hen usually lays the eggs up in the nesting boxes. What is this shit? And I pay a little closer attention to this egg and I look and I notice, wow, this egg's not cream colored. [00:12:00] It's dark brown, like almost like a, a clay colored.

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[00:12:30] but she still has a female hen biology and she still lays eggs. I gotta get some gas.

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[00:12:57] Let me know, because I'm actually super curious [00:13:00] about this. I've always heard that this will happen if you have a flock of, of chickens and there's no rooster in the mix, they'll make

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[00:13:31] And I don't know if it was because she felt like she had more to prove, oh, by the way, I'm not getting the pronouns wrong. So don't write me any anger emails. Lucy is a female bird. She identifies as a male. She practices a rooster's life and lifestyle. I mean, she is Mackin on bitches and Kaka doodle doing every morning.

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[00:14:22] I should learn chicken words. I don't know what those things are called, but they're all just a slight bit bigger. And, but not nearly as big as a full size rooster she's even growing her spurs out. I don't know if you know what those are, but on the back of a chicken's leg, they grow like an extra thumb made out of claw material. It's just a fucking nasty claw and roosters get really big ones. They grow 'em out to like be a couple inches long and, uh, they're sharp and they can tear the fuck outta stuff.

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[00:15:06] now. I don't know if it was because she felt like she had more to prove or if it was just her natural personality, but Lucy started getting mean, Lucy started chasing the dog, chasing my daughters, chasing my son in general. She never really came after me. I was a little bit too big. I think she just got a little scared.

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[00:15:53] It caught me off guard. I wasn't prepared. And I was a little bit offended. Like you little [00:16:00] bitch. I have raised you. I saved you from the wild and I fed you. I've clothed you. I mean, I didn't clothe it, but I would have, if she asked

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[00:16:23] There's three different spots where the roads just like crumbling, it's kind of sad. Kind of scary.

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[00:16:46] and that attack scared up the other hand. So I got two fucking chickens flapping in my face. And I had just been staring at a computer screen for five hours and not talking or moving. So my brain was kind of like, you [00:17:00] know, in that zone where everything's just, it's like hypersensitive and an like anxious, but irritable.

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[00:17:25] I didn't react. Well, I tried to kick the chicken. I didn't kick it. I missed, she was still flapping all over the place, trying, trying to chase me and I'm trying to kick her and it's not good. I ran, I ran into the house and the chicken chased me and I felt like a little crying sissy girl, but it is what it is.

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[00:17:47] I let it slide. I thought, you know, Lucy, while I don't love that you did that to me. I do understand you were scared. I was scared. Nobody meant anything about it. [00:18:00] Let's just forget about it. Water under the bridge the next morning, I'm getting up, grab my stuff. I'm heading out the door. I'm heading to work.

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[00:18:27] I'm like, uhoh this isn't good. And I ran and she just chased me. And then she just waited at the sliding glass door for me to come back out. And I thought that was fucking awful. Because I was stuck in my own home prisoner in my own home. I'm pulling into the gas station. Now I'm gonna get some gas because I'm almost out, Wow. It's already August 15th. That's insane.

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[00:19:08] On the road again,

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[00:19:16] Okay. Where was

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[00:19:28] So after I got myself to safety from this chicken, I decided enough, I don't need to deal with this. My daughters have been attacked. My dog's been attacked. I've been attacked. The hen's been attacked. This damn chicken got to go. So I loaded up my gun and I went up to the balcony. And I spotted Lucy where she was waiting for me.

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[00:20:02] Cause she'd had enough of my shit

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[00:20:07] but I got to it first and I put a P in the back of her head, dropped her right there on the porch. I felt pretty bad about it. I did not enjoy it. I don't like killing anything. I really don't like killing things that I have spent a lot of money on food for, but she was dangerous.

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[00:21:10] So I just went to the bakery and got my donut and then went on with my life, with a dead chicken in the back of the truck. Fast forward. Now it's 6:00 PM and I'm done with work. I'm back home. It's been a hot one. My truck is black and it has a black Tono cover on it.

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[00:21:39] The sunny weather gets me thinking, you know what? It's been a rough day. I had to kill a chicken this morning. I had to go to work. We need some fun kids load up. We're going huckleberry, picket. So everyone, yay.

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[00:22:21] and it probably.

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[00:22:41] It's gonna ruin huckleberry picking and she's gonna be traumatized. This is like her buddy, her friend. And I killed her friend. Can you help me? And he's like, yeah, I'll help. And I said, I'm gonna take the girls. I'm gonna come up with an excuse for you to stay here. And then we're gonna go off into the woods and start picking [00:23:00] huckleberries you hang back, grab the black bag in the back of the pickup and then go dump it somewhere where a coyote can get it.

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[00:23:13] So I go back in the truck, I get the girls, I'm like, all right, let's go, Sawyer, just sat, sat there. And Elsa was like, what's going on with Sawyer? Why isn't he coming? And I was like, oh, leave him alone. He's probably talking to a girl or something. And she's like, no, seriously, what's going on? And I was like, Elsa, seriously, doesn't matter.

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[00:23:45] All right. I got 'em. All right. So we get in the woods. I can see Sawyer's head over the tall grass. He's kind of just following along our same trail. And I realize there's [00:24:00] not that many places to go, but girls can see him and this is not working out well. So I'm just like, okay, girls, let's, there's a huckleberry Bush right over there.

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[00:24:28] These uncle bees. And, uh, she was very upset with me and thought I was being a Dick, but I really just needed her to understand, to just listen, you know, not to have to understand everything all the time, but that's not her style. And so I, I I didn't get her. She just wanted to stay and wait for Sawyer and she was just gonna ignore me.

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[00:25:11] If she wasn't around, I could've let you know what was going on. We're just dumping a dead chicken. It's not a big deal. I wasn't, it was no secret cool thing that you were missing out on. I was just trying to keep Amelia's feelings protected because she's a little girl. That's all. And Elsa got that just fine.

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[00:25:32] So now we're down to one chicken, just one single beautiful Rhode Island, red, and she's nice. And something else about chickens. If they have a flock, they'll be a part of a flock. But if you just have one single chicken living with humans, it tries to flock up with humans. So this chicken that we've never really been friends with before never had a real relationship with now, it's just following everybody around all day long, [00:26:00] just clucking around the yard, eating bugs, just like hanging out and her and Ru not Ruby weird.

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[00:26:29] It's cool.

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[00:26:32] I think this will be the last time we have chickens. After this last chicken dies. I'll probably make the kids eat it just as like a, to show the finality of everything. , we'll kill her, pluck her as a family and butcher her as a family and eat her as a family, make a soup. Maybe she'd probably make it delicious soup.

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[00:26:57] cause that's what those chickens are to us. They're pets.[00:27:00]

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[00:27:09] and the kids don't like eggs.

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[00:27:19] Hughes-Ham, Kelly's running for state representative

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[00:27:31] The week after that, we have an episode featuring Ned Heavenrich of the Brownsmead Flats. Ned stopped by, and we had a nice chat about music and the local community and family and everything. It's great. Amelia makes a special appearance. In the second half of that episode, she comes in and does a little dance while.

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[00:27:54] I've been trying to get more into using video content, but it is very tricky, [00:28:00] mostly just because it's so time consuming, it's hard to know how much time it's worth investing in making a video clip, because I've got a lot of video content now, but none of it is finished. Like none of it is polished up or, or cut together.

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[00:28:38] So the, the newer ones I've recorded in low resolution. Like, I don't even remember what it is. 7, 7 20 by something, but it's better. Cuz you can still tell exactly what's going on. You don't need to see my pores. You don't need to see what my pores look like. They're big. You can probably see 'em anyway,

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[00:29:14] So I think that if I'm not. Making some kind of YouTube, but presence. I'm leaving listeners on the table. Oh man. Dead owl. Somebody hit a little owl, sad.

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[00:29:37] Like it means something like it's a sign from the universe.

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[00:30:14] And then they tumble down to the earth together in a, in a loving embrace. That's one thing. But to see an owl sitting on a branch, eight feet above your head, just staring into your eyes, into your soul,

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[00:30:43] but they do generally seem to happen when I need a sign. Like when I'm trying to make a big decision in my life or trying to decide what route to take. If I see an owl, I know that like, okay, this is a fork in the road there. It's almost like they're [00:31:00] guideposts. And when I'm not sure if I'm making the right decision or not.

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[00:31:29] I had my dog Daisy, and we were going for a walk on the beach trail. it's beautiful and it's smooth. And it's just a really great place to clear your mind and walk.

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[00:31:59] [00:32:00] and right at that spot, there's a bench. And me and Daisy decided to take a little breather. I think I probably made the decision mostly. And Daisy just went along with it if I'm, if I'm being honest, but I sat down on this bench and I was praying and I was just like, should I get divorced? I really feel like I should get divorced.

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[00:32:41] I think my wife wants to get divorced. We should just get divorced. Right. But I just was scared. I, I really didn't wanna make a decision that I was gonna regret. And I kept picturing myself as an old man, fat and alone and regretting getting divorced and be like, yeah, she was hard to live with, [00:33:00] but at least I wasn't alone.

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[00:33:22] I was just afraid and. I was asking for God to show me a sign. And then I'm sitting here on this bench and I notice an owl come swooping in and it's chasing some bird or mouse or something through the dunes. So it's like swooping down into the dunes and then flying back up again and getting a, a view and then swooping back down.

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[00:34:02] And then at the last second, he just flies up, like pulls up and opens his wings, like, woo, like a, like a parachute, six feet from my face really, really close to me. It was such a statement.

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[00:34:39] And I just was filled with this knowledge that I was doing the right thing. And even though it was scary and even though it was going to lead to a lot of pain for her and I, it was the right thing and eventually it would lead to the best outcome and I felt peace about it.

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[00:35:20] So it's not cultural appropriation. It's more of like a, I don't even know. It's like Colten cultural faking, really, but people were talking about what animal they relate to as a symbol. And I was telling people that mine was the owl they're wise. They are thoughtful. They're fierce when they need to be.

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[00:35:45] So I felt connected. And then when this happened, I was like, oh my God. Now it's just like solidified. This is my animal. And so now I actually look for it. I look for opportunities to see 'em and you don't see 'em a lot. [00:36:00] It wouldn't feel significant if it was a Crow or an Eagle, something I see every day, but I see owls maybe once or twice a year at the most, maybe less.

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[00:36:30] That's the thing with applying meaning to stuff, meaning is just whatever we make. Meaning is, built. It's not implicit. We have to assign meaning to things. That's why we have to do stuff and think about stuff and feel things and interact with the universe. That's how meaning is established and applied.

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[00:37:00] Anyway, I'm almost to work. So I'm gonna get off of this thing and start my day. I love you guys. Thank you so much for being a part of this with me. I appreciate you endlessly. I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode and I hope you all have a wonderful month. I'll talk to you on the road, uh, next month.

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[00:37:21] This has been a special presentation of ramble on the road, the companion podcast, a Ramble by the River available only to subscribers of the Patreon channel. If you're interested in subscribing and getting all the episodes of ramble on the road, as well as other bonus content and merge.

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[00:37:42] That'll take you right over to patrion.com/ Ramble by the River where you can select your subscription tier and get listened in today. It's easy. It's quick. And it's cheap.

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