A decade ago, when we were living in our not-so-upscale house in the upscale Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, we had a neighbor with chickens. Like us, she had a not-so-upscale house and a devil-may-care attitude about what the neighbors might think.

During a period of a couple months, I discovered that roosters don’t necessarily crow only in the morning, they crow all day. I thought it was charming. Other neighbors — the upscale ones — didn’t find it charming. They complained, and the flock was made compliant with Seattle law: Three hens, max, and zero roosters.

After that, the chickens were very quiet in their little coop, tucked behind some bushes and against the house in the front yard.

Given this experience, when we were invited to chicken-sit four chickens at a different friend’s house in Seattle, I was puzzled. “How can you have four?” “It’s OK. One of them is not a chicken,” was my friend’s response. This friend will remain nameless, because I’m afraid that the one that is not a chicken acts so much like a chicken, there might be a slight compliance issue. At the risk of being an accessory to the crime, I will not publish any names.

Except for the chickens’ names. First names only.

We arrived at the house for our chicken-sit instructions, and indeed, there were four creatures that looked like chickens. Two brown, two black-and-white. Mango, Frango, and Lucky are chickens. But Clam is simply the most chicken-like clam you’ll ever meet. There is no compliance issue. “This house has three chickens and a clam, Officer.”

Which one of these is not a chicken?

Like the other girls, Clam bursts out of the coop with a rush of flapping, flying energy when you open the door. Then she runs around the yard, clucking and looking for bugs. She digs up the dirt in the side yard, which may explain why the cucumbers are stunted. She hates being cooped up and wants to be top in the pecking order. She runs over and attempts to eat anything you toss on the ground, whether it’s a cucumber peel or a frisbee. She has been seen drinking from the infamous avian-nipple watering system. She produces award-winning volumes of chicken shit.

But lately I’ve noticed that Clam’s behavior is a little different from the others. Yesterday, she came over to me as I was standing on the patio. I thought she might be suffering from insecurity, being the outsider, so she was going to be more affectionate. “OW!” That was not affection, it was aggression! After she pecked me on the big toe, I punished the whole lot of them by vanquishing them from the backyard. And decided it was no longer a good idea to stand barefoot on the patio.

Ow! (Chicken pecking the photographer's foot)

Today, I went out in the yard wearing clogs. Picking green beans, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my heel. Clam had found the only exposed flesh on my foot and pecked it. Back she went, along with the others, into the Chicken Prison Exercise Yard. Barry seemed relieved.

Barry contemplates the risk of squatting near a clam with a beak

Right now, the chicken-sit is pretty easy; the chickens are too young to lay eggs. But what will happen when they start laying? Will Clam lay eggs, too? Or will she lay clams? She just might be the juvenile delinquent of the chicken yard, in which case, I hope she’ll straighten up and fly right. Otherwise, she’ll be out of here, and her owners — no, I still won’t tell you their names — probably won’t give a cluck.

Clam emphatically proclaims, "I am not a chicken!"

The little weather thingie Barry installed on our Mac is great. Down at the bottom of the browser window, it displays a 5-day forecast in tiny icons. I thought they were pretty standard icons — a little cloud, a lightning bolt, a sun.

Until one day, sitting at the computer in North Carolina, dripping sweat on the keyboard, I saw a new one.

icon on fire

“Oh my God! The thermometer is on fire!”

Down at the bottom of the screen, there was indeed an icon showing a red thermometer with flames coming out of it. It very nicely illustrated what I was feeling — a day when I thought I might come around a boat and find Lucifer fanning himself, his pitchfork leaning up against a jackstand.

The thermometer-on-fire icon appeared a number of times in North Carolina, although I never saw the Devil. Too humid for him, I guess. But when we got to Seattle, the icons changed. Now they were back to clouds and sun, no lightning bolts or flaming thermometers. Until one day (you can guess where I’m going here), we looked at Forecastfox, which Barry had set to display Seattle weather, and…

“Oh my God! The thermometer is on fire!”

So what do you do in the Northwest when the thermometer is on fire?

We drove down to Yelm, where Tom took us to a special swimming hole. The only slight problem was the fact that we hadn’t brought bathing suits. Tom assured us that they wouldn’t be necessary; it was a private spot, and after all, it was Tuesday.

We drove through cow pastures, parked, and waded, clothed, into the Nisqually River. The banks were lined with evergreen trees, and the water rushed over rocks and little rapids and our ankles. It was totally cool and refreshing — but what was this? Around the corner came an overloaded rubber raft, packed with Mom, Dad, and the kids. It was followed by additional family members in inner tubes. Then a couple of guys popped out of the woods across the river with fishing poles. And another raft went by with two guys, whooping and hollering, and a cooler.

I had resigned myself to wading, when from behind us, yet another person appeared. This place was like Grand Central Station! This time, it was a woman in a sarong who said her name was Boopsie. I’m not sure if that’s her real name, or if that was a skinny-dipping alias. If so, I need a skinny-dipping alias.

Boopsie charged into the river and nearly lost her sarong in the current. Tom chivalrously helped her hang onto it. At least, I think that’s what he was doing. She made her way to a big rock, perched on it like a mermaid, and entertained us with stories of bathing-suit-free adventures in this spot. “I was here one time,” she said, “and I couldn’t hear anything but the rushing of the water on this rock. Well, along came a helicopter from Fort Lewis, super-low over the water, and before I realized what was happening, there I was, eye-to-eye with the pilot. He just hovered there, staring at my you-know-whats and giving me a big grin.” We also grinned and decided to join Boopsie in the river.

Of course, more rafts came by, but when they did, I submerged myself so they wouldn’t see any you-know-whats. Then a helicopter flew by from Fort Lewis, as low as he possibly could. Boopsie waved at the pilot. I sank down so only my nose was above water. Eventually, we got out, refreshed and covered in goosebumps.

My 2003 polar bear swim

The following day, when we got up, guess what we found? The thermometer was on fire AGAIN. Luckily, we’d made plans to meet Brett and Ann and sail on their Thunderbird, Naumachia. This time, I took my bathing suit. Hard to believe this toasty giant bathtub was the same Lake Washington where I did my first polar bear swim on New Year’s Day 2003. The water temperature was in the 40′s that day, as you can see from the old photo.

And as a result of the trip on Naumachia, I have a bit of useful information for the next record-breaking hot day. On the west shore of Lake Washington, there is still a nude beach. At least, when we motored by, half the people there were wearing flesh-colored bathing suits. And there were no gawking helicopter pilots or people in rafts, only gawking people on sailboats. Now I’m set — if I can just come up with a skinny-dipping alias as good as “Boopsie.”