LETTERS FROM HOME: REBIRTH FROM THE MURRAY MCMURRAY HATCHERY

April 4, 1996

Dear Pat,

Here we go. That time of year when people suddenly reacquire a taste for hardboiled eggs, like them or not. Family is pouring in from Neosho and Nashville and Cincinnati. DC has a bunking party planned for the girls. There'll be egg-dyeing and -hiding and -seeking, and pretty girls in spring dresses all in a row.

Our friend Carlos, a university student from Panama, thinks this business of chocolate bunnies and colored eggs is rather amusing, though not upsetting. Where he comes from, Easter is a serious affair observed with reenactments of Jesus' final days. Days of ashes and sacred wounds.

I guess I prefer the Americanized Easter, hokey and sugarcoated as it is. For me the eggs and bunnies and chicks are gentle symbols of the miracle of rebirth to be celebrated this weekend in our churches.

Everyone loves spring because it reminds us through chlorophyll and quickening pulses that the earth regenerates itself. And we, being earthlings, composites of clay and water and godly spirit, possess the same musculature.

So easy to forget this when feeling stuck in a job or a relationship or a town or when petty annoyances have you seriously rattled or when winter seems like a salesman who won't let you hang up the phone.

Life is immutably changeable.

Easter is a reminder that the question of whether the chicken or the egg came first is superfluous. With life popping out all over, what does it matter?

Which brings me to DC's current infatuation: chickens. She recently received a catalogue from the Murray McMurray Hatchery in Webster City, Iowa. "Your rare breed headquarters since 1917."

Inside are many children's book-style drawings of rare and unusual breeds of chickens and other fowl: Silver Spangled Hamburgs, Columbian Wyandottes, Partridge Rocks, Buff Orpingtons, Black Australorps. Red, Blue and Buff Silkies, Egyptian Fayoumis.

The names are as good as the pictures.

You also can get Araucanas, which are known as the "Easter Egg Chicken" because their eggs range in blue-green shades from turquoise to olive.

Now what, you're thinking, do two people who live in a small city next to a noisy park, owners of two uncontrollable dogs, need with a chicken catalogue? I'd like to know myself and expect to be informed any day now.

The answer may just arrive one day, a box full of chirping pullets. The minimum order is 25, of course, which will require careful ministering of food, water, heat, light and miscellaneous care if they are to survive the crucial first few weeks of chickenhood.

Writing this prompted me to call the city animal control officer, who is married to my cousin Mary (as I said, it's a small city). My cousin-in-law, who grew up on a farm, says chickens are among the dumbest and dirtiest birds in existence, that exposure to their droppings can cause an upper respiratory disease in humans called histoplasmosis, that roosters are notorious for disturbing peaceful sleep, and that some dogs -- his own border collie, for instance -- do indeed have a taste for walking KFC.

But keeping chickens within the city limits is completely legal, he says, as long as they aren't allowed to run loose and their living quarters are kept clean.

And I was afraid DC was going to be so disappointed.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a member of the Southeast Missourian news staff.