India is good for a surprise around any corner and on any street. We once passed a band of musicians blowing horns and banging drums, marching nonchalently down the middle of the road. Cows, of course, are sacred in the Hindu faith and go wherever they damn well please.
And on our way to the airport near Bhopal, our taxi driver asked if we wanted to halt and watch a truck feed the passengers.
They were transporting a brood of hens to market. [1] Properly defined, a brood is the family produced at a single hatching. This group had to be several broods. [2]
We were bemused by how healthy the hens were, and how agreeable to being transported together in baskets. They promptly headed for the field and their feed – and then back to the roadside to be placed again in baskets.
Chickens can’t fly (although they will get a running start and stay airborne for a second or two). There are more chickens than any other bird. According to Wikipedia, “[t]he domestic chicken is descended primarily from the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus).” They’re a gregarious species, and chicks are both incubated and raised communally.
We didn’t witness any of the usual pecking order. Maybe these hens were too hungry.
Later that night over dinner (no, I don’t recall if I ordered a chicken dish) we talked about animal husbandry. The fowl transport truck seemed to both of us much less cruel than an industrial chicken factory.
NOTES: [1] We were told these were Chinese hens, but I have not been able to find that breed anywhere. If my readers can identify this bird for me, I would be grateful. [2] Brood as a verb is also when a bird sits on the eggs to keep them warm with his or her body heat and hatch them. © Jadi Campbell 2017. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s animal photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de. Go to A Clowder, A Cluster, or A Cornucopia for earlier posts on specific animal groups.
Sources for chickens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken and https://animalcorner.co.uk/animals/chickens/
Fun animal names from www.writers-free-reference.com, Mother Nature Network and www.reference.com.
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While I wait for the weather to decide if it really is springtime, I’m enoying the photos from the City of Lights.
It doesn’t matter if I’m in Paris for the art, the food, the shops, or the French way of life. Paris appeals to all of my senses. Whenever I’m there I fall right back in love with being alive. J’aime la vie!
He passed a large skating rink and a children’s train track. When he wandered under an arch, Guy discovered a Christmas Market. His inner child gasped with delight.
Rows and rows of wooden market booths had been set up to create lanes.
At last distracted from visions of doom and gloom, he watched a gigantic nutcracker swallow a continually rotating nut.
A larger-than-life music box twirled on a roof top, the ballerina and her dancing bear partner going ’round and ’round. Real fir boughs and even little trees bedecked the stands.
The roofs were wrapped in shiny paper with tinsel ribbons and bows that transformed them into oversized gifts. Big Saint Nicholases drove twinkly sleighs pulled by reindeer whose heads bobbed.
Guy looked at their pale flames and shivered. Flames, like those of a crash site….
