MY KABIR FRIENDS

MY KABIR FRIENDS
By: Bro. Geminiano V. Galarosa, Jr.
Dagohoy Lodge No 84
(HM- LL 185, JS 169 and RP 147)



Credit this article to Kuya Raul Laman for it was at his suggestion that I encountered these friendly denizens of the earth.

Last year when the pangs of uneasy loneliness hovered all over the horizon both for the lion and his tamer, especially because we have resolved we will manage without the services of a maid as a hired helper will mean an additional mouth to feed, Kuya Raul, an e-mail brother of this writer, suggested the advisability of caring for chickens in our backyard and the two foreign breeds that he mentioned are the Sasso and Kabir chickens. These are not only big but also easily adapts to local environment, he said.

The choice for having chickens at our backyard was carefully considered. Pigs, although a good source of supplementary income that can augment my miniscule pension and at the same time serve as an automatic waste disposal agent, was discarded because of the attendant obnoxious smell that these will create and cats have never been our pets. Although my favorite pet has always been a German Shepherd dog while our youngest son’s was a Golden Retriever, I seriously considered raising a Pit Bull puppy as our eldest son breeds this pedigree at his home in Los Banos. Only, two distinct difficulties arose, how to transport it considering existing governmental restrictions on animals and the fact that it will surely be a menace to the native “askals” that abound in our place. That leaves us no recourse, therefore, but to raise chickens for our pets.

Of the two suggested breeds, I choose “Kabirs” because the “Sasso” line looks more like Jubela that somehow managed to escape the razor-edged guillotine because it has no feathers on its neck.

But it took me sometime to procure these animals as its chicks were not readily available in the market nor in the community. Until one time, a cousin of the missus, upon learning that I wanted to raise Kabir chickens, immediately went to his backyard and together with his favorite grandson, Noynoy, knocked at our door last May, with two young Kabir chickens, and in a standard Visayan joke said, “here are two Kabir teenagers, a boy and a girl” that you can raise!!

Immediately thereafter, I hired the services of the missus’ favorite Jack-of-all-Trades, and had him construct a shack for the chicken’s coop. In addition, I chanced upon a signboard on the road saying that there are one-week-old Kabir chicks for sale at the nearby town and so posthaste went there and immediately purchased ten live chicks.

But if you think it’s fun and easy to raise these animals, you are mistaken., for without adequate experience, mortality suddenly crept in. Consider these.

After just two weeks, two of the small chicks died, another two suddenly disappeared at our backyard without leaving a trace, another two died of undiagnosed disease, leaving me with only young four young pullets and the two originals, who the donor branded as “the boy and the girl” Kabirs which I named Mikatot, a white-feathered male and Beatot, a pinkish-feathered female, in playful variant to the names of our two grandchildren. Which made the missus comment: “Hala ka, your two other grandchildren will surely get jealous for not naming chicks after them!”

Seeing them grow in our backyard is fun. Mikatot would crane his neck early in the morning shouting “Cock-a-doodle-do” at the top of its voice below our window to the consternation of the still-sleepy lion tamer. This morning regimen then serves as signal for me to grate matured coconut for their morning meal. Beatot, on the other hand, would just daintily watch me do my chores as would my granddaughter do but with a critical look as if saying you should better do the job right, dumdum!

Definitely intelligent, these two and the four other growing pullets that I named Dacky, Red, Sexy and Midge would just walk nearby and with Sexy often succeeding in climbing and resting upon my shoulders while I read Albert Pike’s “Morals and Dogma” during my reading hours at our backyard.

Even at this early stage of their lives (Mikatot now weighs more than three kilos), I already look forward to enjoying their eggs at our breakfast table. But only their eggs, for how do you cook and eat your friends when at last they’ve finally grown up?!