Somewhere between the early bird and the night owl on the avian sleep scale is the lowly barnyard hen. There are no poems about her, no sayings using her sleep schedule as motivation to wake up earlier, or work later into the evening.
The hen isn't up before dawn with the sole intention to chase worms, or staying out after dark to prey on night crawlers. She's too far down on the food chain for that nonsense.
No, the chicken has her own routine:
She wakes up, jumps down from her roost, and eventually makes her way to the nests, where she lays her (almost) daily egg. The rest of the day she is eating, drinking, being pestered by our one-year-old border collie/heeler mix, scratching the seeds out of my garden, looking for bugs, or whatever else her tiny heart desires. As the sun goes down, the chicken will make her way back to the hen house along with the rest, and by dark she will be sitting comfortably on her roost. The next day is like the one before it.
I appreciate the chicken's way of life:
Eat when hungry.
Sleep when it's dark.
Lay an egg most every day.
Sing when happy.
Chase insects because it's fun.
Run from danger.
Let the world know when you're distressed by making obnoxious noise until something is done about it.
I think I've found my spirit fowl.
So, I will take the unspoken advice of the barnyard hen.
I will follow my daily routine because it is useful to me,
and beneficial to the whole,
however simple or repetitive it may seem.
"It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life." - J.R.R. Tolkien
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