Lord Tennyson

Name: Lord Tennyson
Age: 3-yrs-old
Story: Tennyson, rescued from a neglect case with 140 other roosters, hens and chicks.
Likes: Sharing scratch with friends. Blocking the entrance to the barn in the evening.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

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Murphy

Name: Murphy
Age: 1-yr-old
Likes: Head-butting Tommy, the steer. Long walks down well-trodden paths.

Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 

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Alice the sheep

Name: Alice
Age: 1 year old
Story: Raised as an FFA (Future Farmers of America) lamb. Student didn't want to send her to slaughter, rescued her instead!
Likes: Pretending to be friends with people. Green grass and sweet grain. Aiden.

Carl Sandburg

Sheep

Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep--
one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by
one four-footed pattering up and over--one by one wiggling
their stub tails as they take the short jump and go
over--one by one silently unless for the multitudinous
drumming of their hoofs as they move on and go over--
thousands and thousands of them in the grey haze of
evening just after sundown--one by one slanting in a
long line to pass over the hill--

I am the slow, long-legged Sleepyman and I love you
sheep in Persia, California, Argentine, Australia, or
Spain--you are the thoughts that help me when I, the
Sleepyman, lay my hands on the eyelids of the children
of the world at eight o'clock every night--you thousands
and thousands of sheep in a procession of dusk making
an endless multitudinous drumming on the hills with
your hoofs.

 

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Benjamin, the pig

Name: Benjamin
Age: 5-yrs-old
Story: Found running loose in Martinez, California. Hit by a car, suffered broken ribs. Also had mange.
Likes: Staring at his blue eyes. Obviously pumpkin.

Margaret Atwood

Pig Song

This is what you changed me to:
a graypink vegetable with slug
eyes, buttock
incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,

a skin you stuff so you may feed
in your turn, a stinking wart
of flesh, a large tuber
of blood which munches
and bloats. Very well then. Meanwhile

I have the sky, which is only half
cages, I have my weed corners,
I keep myself busy, singing
my song of roots and noses,

my song of dung. Madame,
this song offends you, these grunts
which you find oppressively sexual,
mistaking simple greed for lust.

I am yours. If you feed me garbage, 
I will sing a song of garbage.
This is a hymn. 

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Chaucer, A Rescued Rooster

Name: Chaucer
Age: 2-yrs-old
Story: Rescued from a neglect situation with 140 other birds.
Likes: Pumpkin seeds and long walks on straw.

William Shakespeare - Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee -- and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For they sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

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Margaret Turkey

Margaret
Age: 6 years old
Likes: Grapes

To Daffodils

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay as you;
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,.
As you or anything.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as to the pearls of morning's dew,
Neér to be found again. 

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