Little Bullies and How to Improve Them

Pet stories, with political overtones for those who want such, and a hat tip to +Andria Perry for the Alabama update...

Once long ago, in the bad old days of DDT when it seemed that every North American bird except the European Starling was becoming endangered, the house now known to cyberspace as the Cat Sanctuary did not allow cats or dogs. Apart from the pony and some cows we cared for in some years, the pets my brother and I kept were chickens. Some of these chickens were merely laying hens, and others were real pets who followed us around and did silly pet tricks.

Whether these chickens became pets did not depend on their looks. It was their choice, or their brain wiring, or whatever. All the tricks they did were their own. All we trained them to do was do on cue some cute thing they'd done all by themselves. All of our chickens were reasonably healthy, sleek, and "pretty" birds. Several belonged to fancy breeds.

We had some neighbors who encouraged us in making pets of chickens, and one year some of them found a set of four Ancona bantams for us.

Some people, it seems, don't know what a bantam is. Most breeds of chickens exist in "full-sized" and "bantam" strains. Bantams typically weigh less than half as much as the full-sized chickens they resemble:

Baby Bantam chicken standing behind full-sized litter mate, donated to Wikipedia By gina pina from Austin, TX - [1], CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4129236 

Ancona bantams are pretty birds. This ruffled-up, full-sized specimen shows the color pattern...

Large Ancona hen photographed for Wikipedia By Festina lente - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15230791

Now imagine that coloring on a dainty, graceful little bird that can sit comfortably on the palm of your hand, and can fly, like these Sebright bantams:

Sebrights were one breed we didn't keep. No special reason; lots of people like them. Photo donated to Wikipedia By No machine-readable author provided. Mz~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). - No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1901846

The attitude of our Ancona hens was similar to that of those strutting, tail-fluffing Sebrights in the picture, but Anconas have higher "combs" and positively fierce-looking beaks, like miniature hawks. (They can beat a hawk in a fair fight, too.) 

Anyway, that strutting, tail-fluffing attitude is not necessarily desirable on a new family you want to introduce to an established family of chickens. Most chickens have a distinct social hierarchy known as a pecking order, in which smaller, older, slower, or sicker birds are often pecked until blood flows. We had a chicken family that did not peck, of which we were proud. Instead of fighting, our birds asserted positive leadership by sharing food treats with the others. (That year they were a mix of Inglebright, a breed that apparently no longer exists, and Black Rosecomb.) Those Anconas had never heard of such a thing. Full-sized Anconas are one of the more aggressive breeds...there's actually an online game in which they're valuable pets, because in real life Anconas will fight in defense of their friends. They fight among themselves, too.

The alpha hen in the Ancona family had been a pet before and had formed some attitudes toward humans. She respected men, kissed up to women, and hated children. My brother and I were about the same size, and his hands were bigger, so how that hen knew to classify him as a child rather than a man we never did figure out...but she did. She cuddled up on my shoulder, and when my brother reached out to invite her to move onto his hand, she bit him. Even full-sized chickens can't bite hard enough to break the skin on your hand, but if she could have, she would have.

Then just to throw her weight around she tore a chunk of bleeding flesh off one of her daughters, and then when she met our resident flock and immediately attacked the smallest, gentlest little Inglebright hen, we agreed that it didn't matter how pretty these hens were; we didn't want them as pets. Especially not the one who'd already been a pet and learned a few cute pet tricks. She had become disgusting to us. The words "chicken soup" came to mind.

But our elders had a better idea. "Send that one to stay with the X's who have only full-sized chickens. When everybody around her is bigger than she is, that ought to improve her disposition."

Rhode Island Reds are generally a peaceable breed, with other desirable qualities. The hens lay lots of eggs; the roosters grow fast and yield lots of tender white meat. They're not especially clever but are calm enough to learn to recognize their humans and respond to simple commands. And they are not to be pushed around by bantams.

Well, we did, and it did. That little Ancona bantam hen was so busy dodging the Rhode Island Reds that when we visited those neighbors she didn't even try to bite my brother's ankles any more. She raised a fine brood of younger, more gentle Ancona crossbreeds. My brother later reclaimed a daughter or granddaughter of hers, who became one of our best beloved pets.

Thirty-some years later, about a year ago, regular readers remember that the Cat Sanctuary had attracted a truly antisocial stray cat, a gorgeous fluffy half-grown Himalayan with a hostile, sneaky, cowardly personality. It attacked our sweet, docile Irene who had never had to think about fighting or quarrelling with anybody in all her five-year life, and as I cleaned Irene's wounds, terrible, unspeakable thoughts about what to do with Antisocial Cat Barnie came to my mind. So did the wisdom of my elders. When I trapped Barnie, instead of killing it I thought that sending Barnie to live with city people, where it would see only humans, ought to improve Barnie's disposition. Apparently it worked and I even got a little money out of the deal.

Last week's big news was that, as the State of Alabama has had to hold a special election to replace Senator Sessions, the "extreme right" Candidate Roy Moore defeated the "moderate Republican" Candidate Lester Strange. What wonderful names for comedic purposes. "Can this election get any more strange?" "Moore is more strange than Strange!" and so on.

Observing the effect of the Democratic Party strategy of allowing its extremists to claim to represent its moderate to conservative majority, I tend to feel that victories for right-wing Republicans may be good for the nation as a whole--if Republicans can just pull together as a team. Right-wingers like Judge Moore don't represent the majority of the nation or even of the Republican Party but, for strategic purposes, they offer a balance the nation needs. They give the vast howling majority of Americans, who are moderate, a chance to reclaim leadership and take that long step back toward the Right we need to correct the Obama Administration's lurch toward the Left. Much as I'd prefer to see real progress past the old Right/Left split, I think we need first to get our government back to the majority position in which "conservative" means, well, Judge Moore, "moderate" means Ronald Reagan, and "leftist" means Bill Clinton. The majority of Americans remember that Marxism has already failed.

Andria Perry reported that in Alabama some Republicans distrust former Judge Moore. They say he's been the kind of judge who thinks he's there to write his own laws, rather than evaluate people's interpretations of existing laws. I'll agree that that's not a good kind of judge to have.

I wonder, though, whether Alabamans may not be better off sending Judge Moore to Washington.

A judge has considerable autonomy, and can be tempted to misuse it. Judges who "go rogue" can mete out sentences that may not be terribly cruel, but are unusual, even bizarre. They can ignore traditional rules about evidence, in the absence of a jury. They can become overtly silly, like a geriatric judge who used to infest my home town and, during his last days as judge, asked a young blonde witness to prove some point or other by undressing on the stand. They can uphold the sale of a house by someone who never owned it, lived in it, or was invited to visit it, out of race bigotry. They can sentence people to prison terms for things that aren't even crimes--things, like homeschooling in one of Virginia's two test cases in 1981, that will be formally declared legal within weeks after a rogue judge has treated them as crimes. They can blatantly favor one religious tradition, ethnic group, gender, generation, or political party over others. I've heard of judges, presumably as a joke, asking people which football team they were "rooting for" in next week's game before passing a verdict. Judges can be removed from office in disgrace; this having failed repeatedly in the case of Roy Moore, booting him upstairs may be the next best thing.

A U.S. Senator has more legitimate influence on the legislative process, but less autonomy. As Senator, Moore would of course be a more influential connection for people to have than other Alabamans who are equally old and rich (Moore is seventy). And he'd continue to be well paid, perhaps better paid than some Alabamans think he deserves. In terms of actual legislative influence, however, he'd have to form an alliance with 66 other alpha personalities in order to get anything done.

I wonder whether that may improve his disposition.