David wants chickens. For several days in mid-April we cared for a small flock of chicks for a friend. Now David likes to think we can keep one or a few in our patio, next to the excavator and tractors and play house and tiny garden.

We can’t blame him. We all found their chirps and peeps soothing against the rumble mumble of the city outside our walls. As they picked at my coneflowers and rested in the nasturtiums, the chicks seemed always in a pleasant, busy mood, which inspired us to pleasant, busy moods of our own.

David mostly understands we practically can’t keep a chicken happy in a patio like ours, but don’t we all like to dream? Last week he had it all worked out. He figured we could get some chickens from Wabash, a small feed store just a few miles north of here.

(”Will they still have chickens I can buy?” he asks every week or two, as if Wabash would sell their last chicken and not have any more.  And as if we’d be buying chickens to begin with.)

Then, he told me, he wanted to tie our chickens to the roof of the Subaru so we can drive around and show his chickens to his friends.

I immediately pictures two fat hens tied to our roof rack, feathers flying as we drove down Richmond at 35 miles per hour on the way to pay a visit.  Cu-cluuuuck!  “Oh,” I said as I raised my eyebrows and acted impressed. “That’s an interesting idea.”

Like I said, don’t we all like to dream?

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For a few weeks David has been making pictures in his tortillas.  Rather than buckling down and eating like the rest of us, he folds his tortilla in half and makes little bites along the fold, like cutting snowflakes out of a piece of paper.  This is apparently an angel

and this one a butterfly.

I’m sure he’ll find a picture of la Virgen in one of our tortillas any day now.