Barbara Wood's Dispatches from the Home Front: The further adventures of the fearless flock Barbara Wood's Dispatches from the Home Front: The further adventures of the fearless flock (September 15, 2004)

I'm kind of angry at our chickens.

They've been flying over the little fence around our vegetable garden, and chowing down on any tomato that shows the slightest sign of turning red. When I notice them I run over and yell: "Bad chickens. Out of the vegetable garden," and shoo them out. The dog helps by running around and barking madly, and they leave.

But they've had way, way more tomatoes to eat than we have.

They've also decided they like begonia blossoms. But they only had blossoms to eat for one afternoon, because now we've only got a lot of pathetic naked begonias.

Of course the chickens may be kind of angry at us. Four of them were entered in the San Mateo County Fair in August, and it turns out there is more to showing a chicken that we imagined.

I knew they'd hate being caged for 10 days because they usually are confined only at night. But I didn't know until a few days before the fair about the part they'd really hate -- the baths. The idea that you could wash a chicken really never crossed my mind until the 4-H chicken project leader told us we needed to do it.

"How do you wash a chicken?" I squawked.

Turns out you catch the chicken, dunk it in a bucket of soapy water, swish it around, take it out and rinse in two buckets of clean water. Then you towel it dry. Some people blow-dry their chickens, we were told, but we don't own a blow dryer.

I teamed up with Brenna, who is supposed to be in charge of all these chickens. The first chicken actually went pretty well, but maybe because they caught sight of what we were doing to their sisters, it became increasingly difficult to catch each subsequent chicken.

Two are the Polish breed, with a mop of feathers on their head that covers most of their eyes and fans around their faces -- sort of the old English sheepdogs of the chicken world. Those two were especially difficult not only because they tended to get those feathers around their face pretty dirty (with tomato juice and such) but because they are off-white.

Brenna scrubbed their head feathers individually with a sponge.

The chickens did not respond to the baths as would a stressed-out mother offered e a bubble bath. They were more like 4-year-old boys who prefer to remain covered with dirt, thank-you-very-much.

But we finally got them cleaned up with nearly an hour to spare before bringing them to the fair. They were considerably cleaner than Brenna and I were.

But then we had to get them into the recycling bin they were riding to the fair in. We'd catch one, put it in the bin, cover the top, catch another, open the bin, a chicken would fly out, catch another. ...

I'd like to say all our efforts paid off with four blue ribbons, but we did not do as well as those who blow dry their chickens. Our hens received two seconds and two thirds.

But they sure were happy to get home.

Barbara Wood lives in Woodside in an old house with three red-headed teenagers, a work-at-home husband, one full-time and one half-time dog, nine chickens and a fish. Her column runs the third week of the month.

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