Sometimes I find it’s hard to keep up with life here in the swamp. I’d like to think I orchestrate a lot of the comings and goings; that I have a finger on the pulse of the farm so to speak.

Recently I found that’s not the case at all, I’m just part of the flotsam & jetsam in the current of rural life. Which brings me to the recent Florida State Fair. When my girls (the human ones) were younger we did the whole 4-H thing with exhibiting our dairy goats……that’s a dirge in itself worth a few chapters. But I’ve found that exhibiting our chickens is so much easier. #1 They are in a cage——not on a leash wrenching your shoulder out of its socket. #2 They are dropped off in the Poultry Hall. #3 You are not allowed to feed them yourself. The State Fair Poultry Hall personnel do that for you the entire time your birds are being exhibited (in their cages, by perusing judges walking past them). For that you get free tickets and parking passes for the registration fee for the chicken.

So for me, it was a no-brainer. Show the chickens. Eat the fair food. Put on unnecessary poundage with fried food cooked in fat that is older than I am. It’s great!

Our chicken population ebbs and flows here. They are truly free-range chickens. Not the politically correct kind of free-range with ridiculous tiny cages, but real run-for-your-life free range. Our chicken’s DNA has been fine tuned to the DNA that does not go into the back yard where the Wolfhound pack is napping. And our flock’s genetics is devoid of the propensity to wonder too far into the woods or swamp……..it’s usually a one-way trip.

Our chickens are very aerobically conditioned. The ones who stay close to the coop are the ones who have subsequent generations. Which leads me to Colonel Sanders. A beautiful, chunky gloriously golden Buff Orpington rooster. He was definitely going to be a ribbon-worthy entry at the Fair. And we were already taking Rooster Rex (named after the wine—Rex Goliath). His nick name is Chicken Whine. And One-Eyed Black Jack (a Black Jersey Giant rooster) along with a fat roaster of a Buff Orpington hen named Lady Tyson. Now normally when a chicken disappears here you know it. You run across that foreboding “poof” of feathers in a circle on the ground and the tell-tale trail of feathers off into the swamp. You generally get the idea of what happened. But with Colonel Sanders we just noticed one day when we were collecting the entries for their obligatory bath that he was missing. (yes, one year my daughter’s Black Australop was marked down because she was dirty———that’s because we had only just snagged her out of the coop the night before! She was definitely swamp-dirty. Duh!)

He (the Colonel) had been there the day before, or was it the day before that? We all saw him, and then……no Colonel Sanders—–no “poof” of feathers, no alarmed squawking by the flock, no dogs barking, no nothing. Colonel Sanders was just missing!?! I searched the swamp. I asked neighbors. Nothing regarding Colonel Sanders. In the woods I did find some other wild critter dinner-residue, but not the Colonel’s. An enigma to this day. Maybe he went back to the mother ship. You never know.