"Honey, the outhouse is caught on the clothesline..."

My husband suggested I open "The Chicken Diaries" with this story, written in September of 2006.

I agreed.


The chickens were a wedding gift. My husband, Marc, who is a carpenter, was given 5 hens and a rooster by one of his customers. We were so excited, and despite the fact that we don't have a chicken coop or hen house, we basked in the glow of our newly acquired status as farmers (everyone knows that if you have animals that actually produce something other than gas and poop, that makes you a farmer :D ) . All obstacles seemed irrelevant. Besides, we did have an old outhouse out behind the barn. Surely that would do.

And it would do. It was perfect. But, unfortunately, it was too far back, and needed to be moved closer to the house. The idea of moving an outhouse seems so improbable to me, I would have promptly gotten busy building a pen out of chicken wire and twist ties or something, but Marc is a man of many skills and abilities. One thing I have learned about people of many skills and abilities is that they tend to think that everything is possible. If the outhouse didn't get moved, it would not be because it wasn't possible to move it, but because Marc simply hadn't figured out HOW to move it yet.

So late yesterday afternoon, I looked out the kitchen window facing the barn, and saw Marc slowly wandering in circles around the outhouse. He was thinking hard, I could tell, as I could see his furrowed brow from afar. Finally, he came back to the house, his stride strong and sure. He had figured it out. He hitched up our wagon to the back of his work van and headed off through the front cornfield and around the house through a meadow back to the barn and outhouse. Curious, I wandered out to watch, poking my way though the tangled grass and wildflowers. He measured the wagon, measured the outhouse, and began to jack up the outhouse with the intention of essentially toppling it onto the wagon. This plan went off successfully, and the small and exceedingly old building remained intact as it creaked into a very narrow fit. The front of the wagon was raised and propped up by a large tire iron, in order to receive the building. The challenge then was to lower the front of the wagon in order to raise the back and the outhouse off of the ground.

This is where I became very useful. A good section of the outhouse was hanging off the back of the wagon, and there wasn't enough weight in the front of the wagon to hold it upright, so Marc had me sit on the edge of the front of the wagon, with my feet on the hitch bars for balance. Then, Marc would carefully drive the van and assorted wagonned burdens through the meadow, the cornfield, part of the lane and across the front yard to the spot that he had chosen.

The hilarity of this was not lost on me, as I sat perched on the wagon, repeatedly glancing behind me at the shifting, creaking, rusted roof of our new hen house. I had visions of the newspaper headlines: "Local woman killed by falling outhouse" or "The dangers of outhouse use - why indoor plumbing is the way to go" or "Outhouse vs woman - outhouse wins". I remembered an argument that I had had with my husband, who had watched a documentary that claimed that farmers have the world's most dangerous jobs, more dangerous than firefighters and policemen. Apparently they get injured or killed on the job more often than any other profession. The outhouse shuddered as we went through a dip in the field, and suddenly it all made sense. Firefighters routinely go into burning buildings, but you don't see them bouncing through fields perched on wagons carrying old and creaky buildings. Eureka!

I was busy contemplating these deep and profound thoughts, as well as nervously looking over my shoulder at the crest of the building, and I did not notice that the outhouse was caught on the clothesline until I heard the moaning whine of the line about to snap. I looked up in time to see my daughter's Winnie the Pooh bear blanket pulling across the rusted tin, and yelled for my husband to stop. There are moments in life when you find yourself saying things that you never imagined saying. These are not harsh or angry things, but things that just don't seem possible to ever have to say. "Honey! The outhouse is caught on the clothesline!!!" is one such saying. But there I was...saying it.

So now, the outhouse-loaded wagon is safely parked in the designated spot. And the chickens are in a cage in the garage, because it is raining and the pen will have to wait for a drier day. And I've been thinking...maybe we'll be able to do something with the chicken wire and twist ties after all. Heh.

Oh, by the way, we named our rooster King Aragorn. Just because. :D