The Myth of the Mulberry. By the Feathers Grimm.

The day of the Great Birthday Chicken Massacre, was a chilly, grey day in February. Youngest was turning 5 years old, and had wanted a Fireman Party. To this end, we had gone for a tour of a firestation and a wonderful little ride in a emergency vehicle, all very exciting. The party included fireman games and fireman hats and the arrival of the gear of a fireman for all the little 5 year olds to try on, swallowed in the scarred, enormous boots, necks wobbling under the weight of the helmet.

During the party, I had gone outdoors to collect something, and naturally, looked up to the barn to see how the birds were getting on. The girls were all out, having a time in the brown grass of February. Set just downhill from the barn, bordering the corn field is a large mulberry tree. From it hangs a relic of optimism- a broken, moss coated porch swing which I should certainly remove, but I continue to let it hang, watching it slowly molder to unreconizability. But, this day, the porch swing was not the only inhabitant of the single mulberry between dirt and the grey sky. Several large birds perched in its spread. I raced off the back porch, up to the tree in trepidation. Sure enough, as I got closer, the compact, strong bodies of hawks lifted to the sky and then settled back down. My hens pecked easily and ignorantly all around the barn yard. Mindfull of leaving a household full of 5 year olds, their minds turned to the glory of fighting fires... I abandoned the birds and raced back to the house to run the party. Imploring- to no avail- for my older children to go protect the hens, I frantically tried to make moments for me to run up to the barn and back without stopping the revelry. Peeking out the window, I spied a bunch of the young Buff Orpington hens making their way right under the tree full of patient predators. The hens moved intently gazing at the ground, one foot at a time hovering before making the next step, their soft, gutteral coos lending tune to their concentration. Ever hopeful- even in February, for the Easter Egg Hunt-type joy of finding juicy seeds or darting bugs. My intervention was too late- for now I was three hens short, and very unhappy with my afternoon's work. Since when do hawks hunt in packs? They are singular predators. Had I opened the drive-thru window for Accipitrinae? No amount of my shouting had convinced the birds to really leave. They would fly out of the tree, then circle back and land. Dead bodies of my hens below. One missing.

I tried to hide my distress from the party-goers, and soon bundled them hurriedly into the cars of their parents and "Thanks so much for coming!"

Now, my fondest desire was to make the hawks think the tree was a less than safe place to queue up for luncheon. Yelling didn't seem to help, and you aren't supposed to kill hawks (although my feelings of charity had fled). So, I loaded up my husband's potato gun. This was a gift for his 40th birthday from my clever and humorous sister and her husband. The other half of the gift had been a bottle of moonshine. (Nothing says welcome to 40 like flying potatoes and 100 proof). For the uninitiated- your forties will hold all manner of wonders- the potato gun is a pvc pipe creation in which you shove a proper sized potato, fill the back chamber with combustible gas- disinfectant spray- and then a gas barbeque starter creates the spark that ignites the gas and propels the potato from the end of the pipe with some force. I loaded my tuber-zoomer and snuck out to the tractor sheds, 50 yards south of the well-fed hawks in the mulberry. Planning to try and hit the tree-somewhere- with a potato, which would seem like the tree itself was arguing with their purpose.

Taking a stab at aiming towards the center of the tree, moving slowly, slowly, concealed behind the edge of the tractor shed, I pushed the starter.
The sound of the ignition and departure of the potato was a bit loud. To my dismay, then wonder, the birds burst out of the tree, away from the sound- and for the one farthest south- right into the path of the potato.
Astonished I watched the potato and hawk meet at high velocity, causing a small cartoonish burst of feathers to slowly fall to the ground, the hawk swiftly winging away into the gloomy afternoon. Torn between triumph and guilt, I stayed with the hens until they put themselves to bed in the furthuring darkness. No hawks made an appearance.

The Mulberry, in the fall, with a rainbow sunspot on the right.

Indeed, to this day, I have not spotted another predator in the mulberry tree. Maybe its danger has fed a source of folk wisdom in the hawk populace- "Once upon a time, there was a group of friends who found a wonderful place to sit and eat their luncheon. Unbeknownst to them, their perfect picnic spot was not what it seemed...."