I don't like chickens!

My wife's niece (or maybe it's my wife's younger sister) decided it would be profitable to raise some chickens. We went out of town quite a long distance to where some cousins live, and bought about a dozen female chickens and a rooster. They are now living (some of the time) in a coop a dozen yards from our house. During the day they range free. Nobody collects the eggs, so now, after three months we have another 20 or so baby chicks.

Now I don't really have anything against people trying to get enough protein in their diet. When I first came back to Thailand 27 years ago we went to live with my then wife's older brother in the boondocks in Nakhorn Ratchasima province. When I use the word boondocks I mean what the Thais call /baan nawk/ "outsice the village". At the time there was no road connecting our neighborhood with the highway going to Khorat. There was also no electricity or water. Well, there was water, but not in pipes -- we got out water from a pond on a neighbor's land. Made me appreciate unpaid child labor.

Now the people who lived around there were Thailand's rural poor. They were getting along, at a subsistence level. They even had some cash income. There was a television set in one house in a ten-family village a couple of miles away from our house. Someone in the neighborhood owned a tractor, and earned a little supplemental income by exchanging batteries and recharging them while he worked during the day, so you could have appliances running of a 24 volt battery.

Anyway, it gave me an opportunity to appreciate the economics of subsistence living. Fish is a major source of protein, because they grow in the streams and only need to be caught. Every house had a few chickens running around, because they could feed themselves but would also scarf up left-over rice if anyone actually had any left over after a meal. A few people had a pig or two, but they needed feeding, and it could be a choice between feeding your kids or feeding the pig. Most Thais never eat beef, because the buffalo or oxen are too valuable as beasts of burden (this is changing now).

Anyway, I don't know exactly what the niece's plan is, but her husband is a car salesman and she earns a salary clerking in a small convenience shop (not one of the 7-11 chain). The thing is, the damned rooster crows, starting early in the morning and continuing all day long. I really don't like it.