“Oh, it’s gotten pretty big! But wasn’t it a male?”
“I think it was female…”
“Then can you get eggs?”
“Well, I’d like them if I could…”
I wanted to get rid of the pit vipers first, so I stopped by the friend of my mother’s relative’s house. His last name is Yumoto.
I get a bit worried thinking about whether the mountains around here are active volcanoes, but keep it to myself.
When I got off the mini truck, Yuma did too, so now it’s going around the dirt floor in Yumoto’s house. It’s cute.
“Nevermind the chickens pops, the pit vipers.”
“Oh! You got two. Nice!”
I give him the two bottles.
“All right, I’ll give you a reward.”
“Reward?”
“There really are so many pit vipers around? Are you all right?”
Says Yumoto’s wife as she brings tea and teacakes. And that rice cracker is huge. And tasty.
“Thank you very much. I’m fine for the time being, but since I’ve been seeing a lot of them around the house, I think they might be breeding in abandoned houses or storage rooms.”
Investigating it wouldn’t be easy. And it’d be even worse if they jumped at me.
“We could get someone to go exterminate them? They’re not busy anyway.”
“No, my chickens catch them, so…”
“You’ve got some great chickens. And the one you brought today is…”
“Yuma. It got one in the back of the house today too.”
“Good job Yuma. Do you want vegetables?”
She says as she puts out vegetable scraps in a corner of the dirt floor. Things like carrot peels and bug-eaten parts of daikon leaves. And once Yuma gets permission, it gets close and starts eating. It really does understand me.
“A thousand yen each. And take some vegetables with you.”
“Thank you very much.”
I don’t know the going price of pit vipers, but I’ve heard of places that buy them for two thousand. But I don’t want to keep them in my place and deal with them, and my other alternative would be to just have the chickens eat them, so getting a thousand yen for them is pretty nice.
And pops has been helping me a lot anyway.
“Shouhei, we’ve got a lot of drinks and canned goods, so take some too.”
“Thank you very much.”
Their house is old, so that’s probably why it has a large storeroom with all sorts of cans.
He retired a year ago, and he says that every year he gets them as end of year and summer gifts, and they can’t eat them all.
Their two sons live in the city too, and only come by about once a year.
“And our kids get mad if we send them stuff like canned goods.”
“Really?”
They’re canned goods, but the kind of things sent as end of year and summer gifts, so there’s a lot of iffy stuff. I get the feeling that there aren’t that many things like vegetable juice and tomato cans that you can just open and satisfy your hunger.
I pick things that are about six months from their expiration date, thank them, and leave. They were telling me to stay and eat, but I don’t want to be a bother. And I need to buy things too.
That said, I got a lot of stuff like vegetables, so I guess I don’t need to buy too much.
I’ll buy meat in a general store here in the village. If I want better stuff, I’d have to leave the mountains and go to the town, and that would take thirty to forty minutes just to get there. At least it wouldn’t be boring because I wouldn’t be alone.
“Yuma, did you get your fill?”
Yuma clucks. Pochi and Tama are like that too, but Yuma really gobbled the vegetable scraps we got.
“Saves me the trouble of throwing them to the field. Thanks Yuma.”
Yuma responds with a cluck.
I guess the villagers are too chill to care about chickens understanding what I say. They probably just think it’s convenient.
People of this village really are helpful.
I’ve been taking bottles, empty cans, and plastics to Yumoto’s house so they can dispose of them. I’m glad disposing of trash is free around here, or I’d have to take it directly to the processing plant in town. I’ve been there a few times already to get rid of bulky trash.
There are three general stores in the village, so I visit all of them. I pass by the one that’s kind of like a candy store, and see kids trying to decide what to buy.
It’s nice to see kids around.
“That’s a big chicken.”
“It really is, uh?”
A boy is pointing to Yuma.
There are some places with free-range chickens, but not a lot, so people look at my chickens a lot.
“Does it lay eggs?”
“It’s only been a month, so no.”
“No way. It’s so big.”
Yuma moves behind me, because I guess it thinks this is a bother. Pochi and Tama might’ve pecked them instead, but I hope they wouldn’t.
“Welcome Shou. One of your mountain neighbors was here earlier.”
“Neighbors?”
That reminds me, mountains have owners. If I had people living next to me, I’d go say hi, but I completely forgot because we’re talking about mountains.
It’s been getting warmer too, so should I go say hello? I should take some soba too, since people do that when they move.
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