Why the Virtues are 'Cardinal' and not 'Chicken'...

We have four cardinal virtues in our home:

1. Hard Work
2. Kindness
3. Moral Courage
4. Bounceback

Our children get rewarded (well, okay, our eldest gets rewarded... our 6 month old gets spitty, but that's another story) for demonstrating any of these virtues in an exceptional way.  Going above and beyond on a school assignment, for example, or going out of her way to assist an elderly person, or being kind to a younger child at a social gathering.

These are all examples of the basic virtues we aspire to teach.

It's a lucky thing we're not trying to teach the chickens.  They are some nasty pieces of work when they want to be, let us tell you.

We love our birds, don't get us wrong.  And they do exhibit some virtues.  It's just that, when push comes to shove, they'll be doing the pushing and the shoving.

There's a reason it's called a "pecking order".  The chicken who can peck the hardest (in our case, it's a hefty girl named "Duck") gets to eat first, gets to drink first, gets to crow (did we mention "Whistling girls and crowing hens don't never come to no good ends"?), and is generally known as "She who must be obeyed".

On the other hand, we do notice some interesting interplay amongst our feathered friends.  Over a year ago now, during Hurricane Whichever It Was (you lose track after a while...), we had a sick chicken.  We ended up, on the advice of an elderly Iraqi friend (again, another long story) putting her out of her misery.  That story reads like a scene from Macbeth, and when we are up to it, we'll animate a recreation for you.  Anyway, the point is, one of our sweeter hens, Myrtle, actually, sat apart from the rest of the flock to be with her ailing sister.  That was moral courage, and we respect her for it.

She managed to win back her place in the middle of the flock afterwards, too, in spite of lots of heckling and pecking.  That showed bounceback, the one virtue you can never lose.

Don't judge anyone who hasn't been knocked off their perch, we say.  Judge them by how persistently they flap to get back up.

We like Duck's big eggs.  But we love Myrtle.  There's a lesson in there, we think.

Happy farming!