Symmetry

When I was in my last semester of law school and a few months pregnant with Cliffy, I got a nasty anti-biotic resistant infection and missed two weeks of classes. All but one of my professors were understanding and supportive. The other one, who taught the largely-ridiculed required class, was not. Perhaps to flex his muscles and to compensate for the lack of students leaning forward, eagerly scribbling down his every word, this professor declared, eyebrows set in their most stern position, that if I missed one more class I would fail the class and not be able to graduate. I was stunned. I couldn't say, having never been pregnant before, whether I was going to have to miss any more classes and I had put rather a lot of effort into getting a law degree to come up empty handed. I figured whatever chip Bad Professor had on his shoulder, it wasn't worth hashing it out with him, so I had a little chat with the Dean of Students, who was kind, but not quite willing to say she'd override him until there was a protest in front of her.

It turned out not be an issue.

I stayed in perfect health, arriving early to every class, taking my post in the back row, where I glared unrelentingly at Bad Professor, who seemed, to his credit, genuinely disoriented to be the target of such pointed seething. (At least he didn't habitually thrive off student hatred.) I was prepared to glare until graduation--being a girl who can hold a grudge--but I didn't get the chance. The Patron Saint of Knocked Up Law Students took things into her own hands, and two weeks later Bad Professor got some sort of horrible illness of his own, missing the whole rest of the semester. The school scrambled to cover the classes, but much time was missed and in the end the make-up sessions were made optional and we were offered a pass/fail, take-home exam.

The point of all of this, is that this led me to believe that there is a God and She is vengeful.

And last month I came to believe that there is a Chicken God, too.

Mr. Feathers, as you may remember, killed his father, Buster, and took over rulership of the coop a few months ago. Grawp, Mr. Feathers' smaller, skinnier, less-impressive brother, might have moved from gamma chicken to beta chicken, but you really couldn't tell. Mr. Feathers did the crowing. Mr. Feathers did the mating. Mr. Feathers puffed himself up and preened himself while he blocked access to the water bucket or grain feeder. Mr. Feathers took over Buster's spot on the highest roost. If Grawp roosted at all, it was on top of the nesting boxes, with the hens.

And then one day Mr. Feathers was dead. Just like that. He woke up, crowed his little chicken head off, and then apparently fell over, dead. No sign of malice. No sign of disease. He was still big and heavy for his size when I got his body out of the coop. Maybe a heart attack? Hard to say with chickens. In any event, the coop was silent for a day while the hens gave their thanks to the Patron Saint of Chickens Who Don't Want to Be Led About By a Vain, Patrocidal Rooster and also to the Chicken God, who doesn't like to see the jerks win anymore than the rest of us do.