Every few days, especially when we've been away for a while, Peg hoses all the chicken and guinea excrement through the wire floor below their roosting pole. That is how we began our sabbath this morning.
"Sort of reminds you of Diocletian's Palace," she observed as the yellow and white pellets dissolved through the grate.
I had to think a little about that one. Then I recalled the allusion.
For those of you not into Roman history, Diocletian was the Roman emperor from 284 to 305. He reigned mostly from what is now Split, Croatia, and built a grand palace to which he famously retired to raise cabbages. The ruins of the palace are still there, and Peg and I got to tour the place during our cruise fifteen months ago.
I do not have a photograph of the basement, a dark, musty place now filled with souvenir shops and lots of Chinese tourists (or at least it was before the pandemic). Our tour guide related how, once the empire fell and the barbarians moved into the lavish quarters with their families and livestock and such, they cut holes in the floor of the main living space so they could defecate into the basement below.
Yes, you read that correctly. Diocletian's Palace had become one giant outhouse.
Of course, being barbarians the occupants weren't interested in preventive maintenance or upkeep, and so eventually the basement filled completely with poo. And the basement had ceilings that must've been twenty feet high, so one could surmise it was a multi-generational experience to squat and leave one's mark in the old dead emperor's basement.
So, how is the chicken coop at Wyldswood like Diocletian's Palace? Well, as the months have passed with P hosing chicken droppings through the grate, a dung pile has begun to form on the ground below.
The ducks used to hang around down there hoping some chicken crumblies would fall through with the processed chicken feed, but eventually they decided there were things even a duck wouldn't pick through looking for a crumbly. So now it just accumulates, like the pile under Diocletian's Palace, with the chickens and the guineas playing the role of the barbarians. Thankfully, we seem to have a long way to go before the droppings pile reaches the floor of the coop.
A pretty weekend here ahead of the storm--there is always a tiny bit of good even in the very bad, and with a hurricane we coastal southerners get a reprieve from the heat and humidity in the day or two before, as the storm draws the moisture toward its center and a cool, dry breeze emerges from the east. And thankfully, unlike the storm two years ago in October that turned everyone's lives upside down in our corner of the coast, this one's going to be a spectator sport from here at Wyldswood.
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