The chickens had flown the coop. It started with the white one. Dusk came and instead of heading back inside the coop, she chose instead to fly into a nearby tree. It didn’t take long before the entire flock would fly into the tree every evening. But winter was coming. I needed to get them back in the coop, and I needed a new bale of straw for bedding. Locating a single bale of straw is one of those things that lingers on the To-Do list; an irritant. It would pop into my mind

pulled up to the man at the corner, rolled my window down, and held the $5 bill out for him. He stumbled off the curb, nearly falling. He h