I stopped off at the post office and upon approaching the counter, immediately noticed a steady sound of chirping and twittering and singing. It’s a lovely afternoon so I thought the sounds came through an open window. The clerk looked up at me and said, ‘The chickens are getting to me today’. I asked ‘What?’ She repeated, ‘The chickens are getting to me…all the noise. ‘It’s been a long afternoon!’
I chose…actively chose to continue this conversation by remaining in front of her. I put my package down. ‘Don’t you hear that?’ She looked at me. ‘Yes, I do’. I moved the package toward her. She realized I was searching for an explanation. ‘Since we’re in a rural area we get chickens and birds delivered every day for some of the farms…and turkeys, we get turkeys’.
(Why not? I thought in silence.)
‘Sometimes I turn on music and it drowns it out…but it just did not work today’.
‘Well’ I offered, ‘you could start boiling soup back there and that would make them nervous…shake things up a bit, settle them down…and they might be quieter’. I laughed. She looked fairly unhappy and said, ‘Oh, poor things’.
(In my head I thought…’Well, the chickens and turkeys aren’t getting to me at my job…or are they?)
I thought it was funny. She didn’t.
Birds and chickens and turkeys…what next? I fulfilled my postal obligations and left…definitely time to go home…
690 Saint Paul 