Trip to the Crazy Bird Lady

During the course of my day, I do lot's of things. Some of them are best left unmentioned. This is one I think should be shared with the world. I had to go see someone I affectionately call the "Crazy Bird Lady". Whether she truly is crazy, it is not my place to judge. Her reality is definitely unique, much different than mine, which many would argue is not altogether the same as our consensual reality either. For me to call someone "crazy" actually has some merit, for I am a professional crazy man and sometimes actually work to improve my craziness without actually falling off the edge into true insanity. Many facets of my life rely upon this trait.

To make this diatribe shorter, I pulled up at her dilapidated mobile home in the middle of the New Mexico desert. I thought to myself "OK, this is interesting" as I was met by a cacaphony of barking from several mutt dogs. I thought for a second maybe I had the wrong address, as there did not seem to be many birds around, just lot's of trash and junk and several old cars rusting slowly into the desert. Jeff Foxworthy would love this place. After a minute or so, I see a figure emerge from an old camper shell and approach my vehicle. I say hello to her. She doesn't seem so bad. At least she is nice, if not a little shabbily dressed, though she did have this really big floppy hat. Then I get a real good look at the mobile home. I was wondering why she did not appear from the door of the mobile home like most other humans would do. This mobile home was piled full of old boxes and junk. Inside these boxes I could see little heads looking at me. "Oh my, this thing is full of chickens!" I thought to myself as I realized what was staring at me through the open doorway. Then the stench hit! Sort of a cross between death and poop, with some fetid animal feed thrown in the mix. All wafting slowly out the half open door. Great! I thought to myself, "This must be where they send the old ones to croak. I hope we don't have to go into there!" Additionally, I wondered where her house could be, if this chicken mausoleum was the only building to be seen for several miles. Very interesting.

The object of my trip this day was to purchase a Goose from this woman, to replace one a bear had eaten several weeks back, as winter was descending upon my wilderness home. And for a little more background, I was requested to bring my last remaining goose in the hopes he would pick out his new mate. Strange I thought, but no stranger than the weirdness I mess around with. I loaded my 35lb angry goose into a dog crate and drove him down the mountain to this woman's unique home to find him a new girly-friend.

Hoping to speed up this process, I ask where her geese are. Obviously bird's of this stature would not be able to climb the stairs into a mobile home, and I could see no other animals around except for a few chickens pecking at the ground. She says, "come with me" and ducks under several live electrical lines draped across an old truck and goes around the corner behind the mobile chicken sanatorium. I slowly follow, hoping her dogs don't decide to either hump my leg, bite me, or both, in no particular order. I make to corner and was instantly transported into some alternate avian reality. I mean, there were so many birds in this woman's back yard, I wondered how come I had not noticed it. Then I remembered, I was outside the space/time rift looking in.

I was greeted by no less than 50 GIANT Tom Turkeys all puffed up and strutting towards me. They did not stop until they were all pushing up against my legs from all directions. It was as if I had entered a giant field of jellyfish, all puffed out and crowding one another to get the one small fish in the middle. I have never been bothered by animals before, but this was truly creepy. It just felt wrong. There were so many chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys, I thought Alfred Hitchcock had thrown up on the place. The turkey greeters were only the beginning. The rest were perched upon the roof of what had been the back porch of the mobile home. At least 100 more were there, staring down at us like big, puffy vultures. Some of the creepiest, skinny geese I have ever seen in my life were in this small 1 acre yard. And the chickens, well the ones who did not move into the mobile home, had burrowed into the desert sand and were living like rats under the mesquite bush. In fact, there were dead rat carcasses everywhere that the chickens had displaced. It had developed into some sort of ghoulish game for the geese to kill the rats, and they roamed in a large pack looking for more rat victims.

I turned my poor goose loose into this maelstrom. He was pissed from being shaken in the box, so when I opened it, he ran straight out. Bump! right into a very huge turkey, all puffed out. This was more than his goose brain could take, so he ran, as fast as his little goose feet would carry him, to a corner with masses of un-threatening little bantam chickens. He never would go anywhere near these strange geese, or the large alien puffy things strutting around like creatures from some other dimension. We ended up just grabbing the closest goose we could catch, and stuffing them both into the dog crate for the trip home. Fate was not with my goose, as he ended up with a male, and not a female to serve as his new partner. Oh well, can't have everything!

The lady said she had to go into her home to get something, and to wait here. I thought this should be interesting, and waited to see what was about to happen. I half expected her to go into the mobile home, but she went into a very small camper shell instead. It was not even on a truck! This was it. I figured out what had happened. The horde, and I say it lightly, HORDE of poultry had gradually got bigger and bigger, evicting this woman from her home in the process. They had moved into her home, forcing her to live in an old camper shell. It was actually very sad. This had all transpired after her husband had died several years ago. I am guessing her grief turned into a compulsive demon, spiraling her into an out of control collection of poultry. They had slowly taken over everything, and now have taken over her life, forcing her to live in a broken camper shell, while they live in the home. Her world is simply living in the shell and feeding all of these hungry birds. That is it. At this point, it probably cannot be reversed.

If this was not a trip to an alternate reality, I do not know what is.