Chatter

"I have a new idea about chickens."

He doesn't move and, from all appearances, is either deep in thought or in a self-induced trance.

"I said, 'I've been thinking about chickens,'" she says, slightly louder, a little more insistent, bordering on a shout, but not quite there, 

He nods. "I heard you," he says, "and now I'm thinking about chickens too." He pauses, shrugs his shoulders, mutters, again, but (an important but) pauses before going back to the paper. "...but, that's not really new, is it?"

She laughs at that, grateful for the opening. "Don't you want to hear my new idea."

He shakes his head, slowly, as if in anticipation, stops himself from saying not really, because now he is actually curious, and waits.

She is waiting too, waiting, for him to say, "tell me" or "what are you thinking" or "I'm all ears." Which is what he does say, "I'm all ears," and smiles at the image of his body transfixed into ears of multiple sizes and shapes--something to describe to her when the chicken conversation peters out, as it surely will.

"Well," she says and sits up straighter, animated by his encouragement and the new idea. "We'll get a chattering of chickens, house them in the old dog house in the back yard, a lesson for the neighbor kids--adults too--on our urban farm, a way to fertilize the garden--their poultry waste improving everything , making our grass and garden, and . . .

"They grow up, you know."

"Yes!" she says, enthusiastic again, and goes on about eggs, protecting the environment  "And chicken production of carbon dioxide and methane is very low," she says.

He interrupts her stream of enthusiasm. "You've Goggled again, haven't you?"

She stops mid-word and is clearly disappointed that he figured it out so quickly. "How?"

"A chatter of chickens?"

"'Chatter' is the proper collective term for baby fowl."

"Yes, but they are also called "peeps, as in a "peeps" of chickens," he says, with a suspicious strain of authority. (He knows her and also knows a thing or two about the power of Google...and, to tell the truth, is quite prepared to welcome a modest chatter, or  even a peep, of chickens.)