Hauling Asphalt, Rufus & Chicken Killing Dogs

Way back when I was a teenager there was a song with lyrics that said, “They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot.”  As a radical long-haired hippie I liked that song. As a libertarian capitalist I did not like the part about “What gives you the right to put up a fence to keep me out….”  

I always answered (usually to myself) because I bought this land and I protect it from people like you. I saw pictures of what you nature lovers did to that farm in Woodstock.  Unlike thousands of people I’ve met I did not attend Woodstock.  I was a pre-teen at the time. 

Last week I spent several days with Rufus, my bugley dump truck helping in un-paving a parking lot.  The King Street Church is going to replace it with green space.  

They should write a song, “Da dee da dee da and they tore up a parking lot.”

Rufus is old, ugly and slow but he gets the job done.  No rude comments here please.

People often ask me where I got a vehicle. I have two sources: the salvage auctions and on the way to a scrap yard.  But they ask, “How do you know they are good?” I don’t, I buy junk and occasionally find something worth fixing. 

Rufus was scrap and the ugliest truck I have ever seen.  He is electric blue like Travis McGee’s Rolls Royce, Miss Agnes. 

Well, he is blue where he isn’t rusted. 

Every Country Boy knows there are three things that can’t be fixed: a mean woman, a lazy person and a chicken killin’ dog or an egg-sucking hound.

Last week I let my chickens out so they can eat bugs and stuff. It is a fact that free-range chicken’s eggs taste better than caged ones. Apparently bugs add flavor to eggs.

I was careful to introduce my dog Hobo to the hens in hopes that he would consider them family and not kill them. 

I released the hens and watched. For three days Hobo ignored them. 

On the third day he killed two. In his defense, I had been telling him not to bite them.  He didn’t lay a tooth on them. He batted them with his giant paws.

Also in his defense, chickens beg to be killed.  They run, squawk, and flap their wings just begging to be chased and killed. 

It is possible to break a chicken killing dog by putting it on a rubber mat and electrifying the chicken. The dog bites the chicken and there is a blue spark and the dog (unless it is stupid) it never bites another one. 

Twenty years ago, I did that to Scovey (my Lab) and for the rest of her life she not only ignored chickens she ran from them. 

It is somewhat embarrassing for a country boy when his dog runs from tiny chickens. 

Since I have bragged about how smart Hobo is I decided he is smart enough to learn not to kill chickens.

I picked up the first dead chicken, slapped Hobo across his face with it. One of those double slaps, left and right and said “NO!” Then I did the same with the other one.

Finally I locked him in the pen with the rest of the chickens and told him “NO!”

Hobo learned his lesson, which was, “Don’t kill the boss’s chickens in the pen.”

One more round of face-slapping with the third dead chicken, several more emphatic NO’s and now I am waiting, counting the days and the chickens.

The question remains in question. Is Hobo as smart as I think?  Is he smarter than I? 

Will he learn to hide the evidence and lie about it?