For the Birds

No

Yes

This story is about sex.

Ahem . . .

I was raised on a ranch.

There are animals on a ranch.

Animals that do ‘animal stuff’.

Eating. Sleeping. Growing.

Making other ‘little’ animals.

Which then eat. And sleep. And grow.

And make other little . . .

You get the picture.

It was the rhythm of life throughout my childhood.

The statement, ‘I grew up with it’?

Applies here.

My earliest memory of the whole ‘animals fulfilling the measure of their creation’ happened when I was four.

Roundup.

A great red and white sea of animals had been penned in the main corrals.

One jumped atop another.

“Daddy, what’s that cow doing?”

My dad turned and looked. Then realized that he wasn’t quite ready to explain the whole reproductive process to his wide-eyed daughter. “Oh,” he said. “Ummm . . . resting his feet.”

“Oh.” I was satisfied.

For a while.

Oh, he did explain things.

Later. When the whole ‘resting his feet’ explanation started to wear a bit thin.

Yes, being raised on a ranch is an eye-opening experience.

By the time I was in grade nine, I knew it all.

Or thought I did.

We were in biology class. My favourite science.

The teacher was talking about animal reproduction.

Yawn.

Specifically: chickens.

“Now the chicken ovulates once a day,” he was saying. “That’s where we get our yummy, delicious eggs.”

I was with him this far.

“But when . . . exposed  . . . to a rooster, the egg becomes fertilized and a chick results.”

Wait a minute.

Roosters have a purpose? Other than the obvious one of chasing us kids around and being generally obnoxious?

Hold the phone!

Unfortunately, my astonishment was, much to my dismay, expressed verbally.

“What?!”

Whereupon (good word) every kid in the class turned and looked at me.

And snickered.

Sigh.

Yep. I was nearly 14.

And I had just learned that birds follow the same reproductive channels (so to speak) as other animals.

Okay. Now, I knew it all.