CUL-DE-SAC

I walk a mile from home to grocery shop, and my destination is an acre of parking lot at College Ave and El Cajon Blvd that’s lined with a strip mall that’s anchored by a Von’s grocery store.

The approach takes me past things I’ve seen over and over: A boxing gym that’s sometimes full and sometimes empty. A pawnbroker with a long white beard who stands outside his shop and watches cars pass on the boulevard. A storefront church and a fashionable coffee shop called the Living Room.

I cross College Ave, which is always stuffed with traffic, and I start to wind my way around the sandwich shop that blocks my view of the strip mall. But this time I hear something, and it’s not the white noise of a car stereo. It’s a drum.

It’s steady and live and distant. And as I come closer I hear the sound embellished with cymbals and bells. Then I see the dancers. They’re dressed up like dragons and they’re called lion dancers.

As they dance, they stand up then get back down on all fours. They shake their heads and blink their eyes. They do pantomimes of eating heads of lettuce, falling asleep and becoming agitated.

Then I realize it’s the Chinese New Year. Is it the year of the rat or something? I’ll have to look it up on Wikipedia. I’m so ignorant I’m lucky I knew it had something to do with a new year.

But I like the lion dancers. They are like big cartoon characters. Best I could tell… a man filled the hind quarters and a boy took the front. It was the best thing I’d ever seen in the parking lot of a grocery store.

I have lived my entire life in towns and cities. That means the animals I’ve come across have been either pets or wild animals that adapt to urban landscapes. Food has come from a grocery store and I’ve never owned livestock.

Buff Orpington

That changed when I got chickens. It was my wife’s idea, and she thoroughly investigated the topic as she always does, reading books, finding urban chicken websites and looking up the city code to minimize the mysteries and know the legalities of keeping chickens. Now we have six: two Bantam Cochins, two Buff Orpingtons and two Marans.

The Cochins came first. Normal Cochins are huge hens that are Chinese in origin. But the Bantam Cochins are so small they first seem like they may be a whole different bird. But the chicken behavior was unmistakable. They jerk their heads as they walk, they cluck softly and constantly scratch or peck the ground in search of food. I’ve decided the chicken personality is like that of a fussy old maid, who never smiles and seems to want nothing to do with you.

Bantam Cochins are beautiful birds. One of them has a gold color with soft brown markings, and they have feathers covering their feet that make it look like they are wearing slippers. Their short legs give them a waddling gate that adds to a comic aura.

Our other birds are more rangey and wild-looking. The Orpingtons are yellow. The Marans are black with white spots that give them a checkerboard look. But all of the chickens are much more wild and omnivorous than I ever expected.

If there is a dead bird or lizard in our yard, they will devour it. We’ve had to fence off a garden to prevent them from eating everything in it. Chickens bear a strong resemblance to pigs in their way of eating anything available in their quest to survive. If they were forced to live in the wild I have a feeling they’d do just fine.

The urban chicken thing is a trend to which we’ve fallen victim. Urban chickens have spawned hundreds of books and websites. And they’ve made me wonder if they are supposed to be pets or livestock. My family has given our chickens names. But I can only remember half of them and I think that’s because chickens aren’t meant to be pets.

They are not affectionate. It clearly never occurs to any of them that the humans that live in the house may be members of their flock. They shit all over the place, unlike cats and dogs who regulate their elimination so well we can actually invite them into our homes. When you own chickens it’s easy to imagine wringing their necks and eating them when their laying days are done. It just seems to make sense.

There’s a move afoot in San Diego to make it easier to keep chickens in the city. Now, you have to keep the birds at least 50 feet from any residence. One proposal would make it okay, if your chicken coup is at least 15 feet from a property line.

Having fresh eggs is a pleasure. I’m not sure why, but the eggs from our chickens have a richer taste and appear to have darker yolks than the supermarket variety. So far we’ve been able to shield our chickens from predators, though we have seen a fox and a hawk in the backyard in unsuccessful attempts to turn our birds into lunch.

So if you’re thinking of keeping chickens I’d encourage it. But don’t expect them to be neat.

Not long ago, I blogged about my disappointment over the removal of Finax Swedish Rye Bread from the store shelves of IKEA. (“Curse IKEA,” Sept. 26, 2011) And I got quite a few comments on that post. In fact, more commented on that than on anything else I’ve written.

Shortly after Christmas I got this comment from rosasputnik:

It’s back… under the IKEA brand. I just bought 6 boxes at IKEA Round Rock, TX! YAY!!! (Date: Dec. 29th)

I’m glad for her. But my local IKEA in San Diego has given me no such good news. The glad tiding from Texas sound consistent with the basic story I’ve heard. The store tells me they are eliminating non-brand items from their grocery section, but they will soon provide Swedish black bread under the IKEA label.

Unfortunately, the last time I visited the retailing giant I still could find no black bread, NOR could I find the Swedish sausage I’d been accustomed to buying there. Same story… “We are getting rid of non-brand stuff but we’ll replace that sausage and bread you like with something even better and we’ll do it so fast it’ll make your head spin!”

I have come to not believe this story and I’m starting to fear a larger conspiracy. In fact, rosasputnik may not be a real person but a corporate plant, spreading disinformation. Does Round Rock, Texas even actually exist??

I hope to be proved wrong but we’ll see. If grocery products are not restored, I may never assemble another IKEA armoire.

Whenever I spend time with this blog, I keep the company of my computer and of others who are bound to their computers. This means I do my best to ignore the living, breathing people in my household.

It makes me think of a story my sister-in-law once told of an academic family she knew. On a typical evening, dad would stare at his computer, mom did the same while their child texted on a cell phone. She said they spent their time being alone, together.

Technology has driven us indoors. Think of the TV and the car (you are inside the automobile). Technology has also turned communal life to individual life. We’ve seen this as the bus and streetcar have given way to the single-passenger car. We’ve seen it as movie theaters have given way to TV, and even more as the TV gives way to the computer.

We’ve been pretty tough on the boob tube. But at least a TV is not an entirely anti-social device. Friends or family can watch a show in their family room, respond to it together and chat about it during commercial breaks.

I knew a couple in Minnesota who filled out some survey about their marriage. One question asked how much time they spent doing social activities together. They figured television qualified, while reading books and doing homework (they were grad students) did not. No comment on Internet use. Their story predated that era.

But here’s my take: Browsing the web? Using Facebook? Definitely not social. It’s just you and your computer in a long embrace.

Child development types today no longer talk about “TV time” when referring to the things you should get your kids to avoid. Now, it’s screen time. Television, computers, cell phones… they’re all video toys.

There are people who say plugging into your computer isn’t so bad. People who play video games claim they’re intellectually stimulating. Maybe my blog is a social activity on some level.

But there is something in my gut that makes me happier to see my children reading a book than playing with an electronic screen. I’m even happier to see them getting outdoors, playing with each other, exercising their bodies and their imaginations.

Yea, I know. You’ve heard all this before. I’m not trying to abolish the household screen. I just want to make sure we treat it a little like strong drink, which you don’t want to get too much of.

I’ll apply the rule to myself and bring an end to this blog post.