chick in the city

My boyfriend Nate and I are the parents of three laying hens: Dax, Starbuck, and Blair Waldorf.

We just moved to San Francisco from Santa Cruz in November. More specifically, we moved into his mother’s basement in the Richmond, out of which his stepfather runs an antique Jewish bookstore. We spent a month sleeping between a pile of Kafka and last year’s sukkah, desperately emailing hundreds of Craigslist rentals. This was a painstaking process because we needed a cheap apartment with an enclosed backyard that was chicken escape-proof; we were deluded enough to think that this wasn’t too much to ask.

Somehow, I managed to find a landlord that wasn’t completely turned off by the idea of two unemployed recent college grads moving into his building with a menagerie of barnyard animals. The apartment is amazing: a classy, old Victorian with huge bay windows, a remodeled kitchen with granite counter tops, and a separate office where I do “work,” a.k.a. spend my day speculating as to why Kate Gosselin can’t just use her leftover prenatal vitamins to grow her own hair. Not to mention, we’re right around the corner from Zeitgeist, which serves made-to-order, $5 hamburgers until last call. So aside from the fact that my car has already been broken into and siphoned for gas, my new home in the city is perfect.

Now if only our neighbors would get used to this every morning: