When I was growing up we had a mini-farm in our backyard. Apparently, you are allowed 25 small animals in the City of Burbank within a certain radius of all living spaces. At one time or another we had chickens and ducks and rabbits, cats, a dog, my rat, my sister’s hamster and a blue headed conure parrot and also a peach tree, giant blackberry bush, strawberries, corn, squash of all varieties and rhubarb.
How did we get such a menagerie. Well it all started with my mother’s organic kick which was started by my first trip to the dentist at 6 where it was discovered I had 12 cavities. Appalled the dentist asked my mother “What are you feeding these kids!” (My brother had 8…he was only 5) “Oh, frosted flakes, pop tarts, donuts…my husband likes those foods,” was the innocent reply from my mother.
She was quickly educated and, of course, went to the opposite extreme. No more white bread, junk food, chocolate milk or even normal sugar. No, we had homemade whole wheat bread (which as an adult…yum!…but on peanut butter & jelly sandwiches as a kid…yuck.) Unpasteurized Raw Milk delivered from Alta Dena Dairy and we had raw sugar which is unrefined, brown, won’t melt on anything sugar. Makes cereal so much fun and needed as we no longer had sugared cereals. Ovaltine, if we were lucky. And easy desert just about disappeared.
So this prompted planting strawberries in the backyard, where my mother discovered the aphids were a problem. Her solution, ladybugs. The organic solution, of course… no pesticides for her. Ladybugs ate aphids. And she found a place she could order, through the mail, a box of ladybugs.
Now our mailman was a nice enough guy. Stew. Stew got one of my mother’s fruitcakes every year and we all knew Stew. He walked up, stuck the mail in the slot and walked on. He liked us because we didn’t have a dog…at the time. So one day Stew knocks on the door instead of dropping off the mail. When my mother opens the door there he stands with his arm held out as far away from his body as he can get it. The arm is holding a box about 4″x4″ with a fine mesh screen which looks hairy. No, it’s not hairy…it’s leggy. It’s a box of a gazillion ladybugs and what you’re seeing are the ones crawling all over the screen.
“Oh, my ladybugs!” my mother cries and happily takes the box trying not to notice the odd look Stew is giving her. “For my strawberries,” she tries to explain.
The released ladybugs fly everywhere in the yard, disappear and do nothing to help the poor strawberries. My mother is not daunted. She has my father break up a large section of pavement in the backyard so my mother can plant a garden. The ants are very, very happy over her decision. They love what she plants.
Then, my brother comes home on Spring vacation with 6 baby chicks from the 1st grade science project of hatching them. It was him or death for the little guys. Lucky for my brother, my great grandfather used to sell eggs during the depression so my mother had an ‘expert’ to turn to. But she is secretly hoping none of them make it.
Hope dashed, they all survive. She turns to her good friend who not only has a carpenter husband to built a coop but also is Mormon so they keep having kids and they are very keen on the idea of saving money by raising chickens for the eggs. THAT’s when she finds out Burbank lets you have 25 small animals. Because they decide to go back to the ‘catalog’ and buy chicks through the mail.
Now, realize this is the late 60’s and early 70’s and only parenting and the lack of getting high is keeping my mother and her friends from being labeled hippies. They’re canning and farming and trying to go organic while everyone around them is shopping at the grocery store. Segway example…my mother told me to “bleach” my leg hairs in the sun instead of shaving them when I was a teen. You can visualize the “Can you get any crazier” look I gave her.
My mother and her friend Karen decide they each can have 25. They then assume that half the chicks they order will arrive dead…so they order 100. And that is what gets delivered to the post office. 100 live baby chicks in a box, in the cavernous sorting space of our local post office at 4 am…cheeping. All of them are cheeping…loudly and it’s echoing everywhere.
Brave Stew waits until the decent hour of 7 am to call my mother.
“Mrs. Frantz, did you order baby chicks?”
“Oh yes Stew! They’re here, that’s great. How many made it?”
“All of them. But you need to come down to the post office right now because I cannot guarantee their safety for much longer. If we have to listen to this noise for another hour no telling what condition they’ll be in by the time you get here.”
“Oh,” was all she could say and she rushed down to get the box and realize…shit, what am I going to do now with my share of 50 chickens!