Bedlam Farm, which has long prided itself as a peaceable kingdom for animals, was thrown into turmoil this morning as the White hen, a big fat White Brahma, refused to let the newest immigrant to the farm – a Rhode Island Red from a dairy farm – eat any of the birdseed that drops to the ground or stay in the coop.

“We can’t have red hens here,” the White Hen said, “everybody knows they hate us, are dangerous,  they are not great chickens like us. They want to hurt and kill us. Until we figure things out, we must keep her and the horrible chickens who want to do damage to our coop  out!”

The White Hen also said that the Red Hen ought to be banned from the coop, all immigration should be suspended. She should be to stay in the barn, where foxes, coyotes, fishers and wild dogs have easy access to her. They all knew she would not last long. The White Hen’s shocking declaration caused an uproar – no animal had ever been denied entry to Bedlam Farm because of the color of their feathers or because they were different from the other animals.

But the Red Hen comes, said the White Hen, from the strange land of the Gulleys, where farmers make art out of tractors, goats come visiting in the kitchen, hawks and eagles talk to people,  peacocks strut, a genie with a long braided beard makes turtles out of engine parts and Minnie Mouse sits on a throne above the dairy farm. They are different from us, said the White Hen. Who knows what goes on there, or what they might do to us if we let their chickens in?

But this, objected a barn swallow, goes against the deepest traditions of the farm. In fact, she pointed out,  there are photographs of immigrant animals in need of homes all over the farm – Minnie, the feral kitten, Simon, the battered rescue donkey, Frieda, the dog abandoned in the Adirondacks, five or six ewes saved from impending slaughter on a Vermont farm.

Bedlam Farm has always prided itself on its tradition of welcoming strange and needy animals. It was, well…sort of the point of the place.

These animals were all once seen as dangerous, they did bad things, they were frightening to people and suffered greatly at their hands. We always gave them shelter and a home, said Suzy, the ewe. That’s who we are as a farm!

But times have changed, says the White Hen. “There are great chickens, I know some great Rhode Island Reds, but there are some horrible chickens out there who want to come and kill us. We have to keep them out until our people can figure out their people’s people.”

“Say again” said Liam the wether. But the White Hen thundered on. She seemed to know exactly what the other animals wished to hear.

Last year, the White hen thundered, “thousands of chickens rose up at Sunrise Farm just down the road, “they pecked the eyes out of all the other animals and killed the farmer and his wife, they set fire to the barns and burned up all the winter hay! They were all Rhode Island Reds! It was on TV, I saw it.”

Liam the wether was shocked. “I don’t believe that, I came from that farm, I never saw or heard a thing about that. I don’t think it’s true.”

Of course it’s true, said the White Hen, flapping her wings. A rooster told me about it, it’s absolutely true, and all of the other animals trembled, how awful they said, how frightening. Everyone saw it, said the White Hen, I’ll never take it back.

Liam objected again, but the White Hen said he was stupid, he was not a great wether, she knew a lot of great wethers, and he was not one of them. He must be stupid or blind to not have known about the great chicken massacre. He was a disgrace to sheep.  He was escorted out of the farmyard, kicked and pecked at along the way.

There was much mumbling and fear among the animals.

“But how,” demanded Chloe, a rescued pony, “can you tell who is a good chicken and a bad chicken?”

Well, said the White Hen, puffing herself up with great pride. “I have some great ideas. We could make them wear red stars on their feathers so everyone could identity them. And take them off to special farms.  Or we could put them in special internment coops, where they would have to live until our very great people sorted it all out somehow…don’t ask me for details, I don’t do details. That’s for our great people to figure out.”

The White Chicken had a lot of feathers on her head and neck. When she shook her head, a mouse and some ticks and bedbugs came flying out.

“You can’t let them in,” thundered the White hen as hundreds of woodland animals – deer, raccoons, squirrels, rats and mice, moles and geese – the crowd grew and grew – cheered and applauded her.

The Red Hen, starving in the bushes, trembled and tried to hide.

“That’s why you have to keep her out  until our people figure out their people. And we have great people, and they have great people. But their great people are very bad people and our great people are very good people.  I know some great chickens, and chickens love me. Chickens have always loved me, even the ones I have killed and eaten.  But until we can figure it out, we must leave them to their awful fate.”

The donkeys objected. “But the Rhode Island Reds are starving, living in awful places, hungry and cold. There are baby chickens everywhere who need food. You know, give me your tired, your poor, your yearning to be free. Isn’t that the dream of the farm? They took Lulu and I in, we needed a home. They took Simon in, he was starving.”

“That’s not our problem,” huffed the White Hen. “That was different, those chickens were like us, they weren’t different. If we let them in, they will burn the barn down, slaughter the sheep, pee in the hay. They are very bad chickens, awful, horrible chickens.”

But, whispered Chloe, what about the humans who come and feed us every day. What will they say?

“We don’t care what they say,” clucked the White Hen. “He has no feathers on his head and walks like a duck and is always running around with that annoying camera and those crazy dogs. And she talks to trees and collects rocks.” She shook her feathers in indignation. “Besides, they only come out here once in awhile. They can’t make us do anything.”

And it was true, there was no sign of the man and woman who ran the farm. It seemed they had no idea what was happening, as if they were oblivious. He sat at his computer much of the day, and she sang and danced and spun in her little yellow house.

“She gives me apples every day,” said Chloe, “I don’t think she would like it.” He takes me herding, said Red, I don’t think he would starve an animal.

But nobody wanted to hear that. They were all exhilarated, feeling a new rage, a new power. Somehow, it felt good, for the first time in their lives, they had power.

The woodland animals were angry, frightened. And filled with hate.

The Bedlam Farm animals were picking up on this new idea of hate and fear, something that didn’t come up too often on the farm.  Mostly, they just grazed and hung around. Some of them liked the new feeling, it make them feel safe and important. It bothered a few others, but they learned to be quiet, nobody was listening to them. It was like a big storm had come in, and a great wall of water was changing things.

They were angry about the farm and the way it was run, they just didn’t realize how angry they were until the Rhode Island Red appeared. And then they knew that could be angry about it.

We have those humans supposedly running the farm, the White chicken said, they are pussies, they don’t know shit about terrorist chickens. We do not trust them to keep us safe, they brought the Red chicken here in the first place, and how can we know she’s safe!

“Don’t curse in here,” said the Brown Hen to the White hen. “It’s okay to hate, but not to use dirty words.”

How do you give someone a test for chickens being safe?, wondered one of the donkeys. But she said nothing.

Red, the sweet border collie, objected, but he was drowned out, jeered at, ridiculed as a wussy dog. He skulked out of the barn meeting and back to the house, where he crawled under the dining room table and went to sleep.

All day, the Red Hen tried to come out of the bushes to eat some seeds. But the White Hen kept chasing her back, clucking and flapping her wings. She was hungry, so she peeped her head out of the bushes, but she was set upon, pecked, driven back.

At night, the animals voted to keep the Rhode Island Red away from the bird seed and out of the coop. She had no idea what anyone was talking about, she was a simple chicken,  shy and industrious, she just pecked all day and laid an egg on each of the long days of sunlight. And she was very frightened.

She had never burned anything down, or peed in hay, or pecked the eyes out of another animal.

The Rhode Island Red was a quiet hen, not as pretty as the others on this farm, not as big. She was not used to fighting for herself, she had always been well cared for at the other farm, she had never seen trouble.

She spent the night hungry and shivering in the barn.

Waiting for the coyotes to come.