When we moved here fifteen years ago, the owners/managers of Quiet Harbor told us there had once been a three hole golf course and that, as I recall, these chickens marked the teeing off sites. But by then the chickens had been moved out of the way along the fence. Eventually grass grew up around them and they were forgotten.
Last fall a couple of the workers used some wood from a downed tree and finally gave the chickens their own permanent roost. They are finally home to roost.
As a child I was warned against doing anything regrettable lest my chickens come home to roost. We had chickens and they did roost in the chicken house at night, so maybe I didn't understand what Mom meant when she first used the saying around me, but I came to understand that it meant any harm I did to others would come back to cause me problems.
So if I wished for something bad to happen to someone, Mom would say, "Be careful what you wish for. Curses, like chickens, come home to roost." The saying probably dates from 1809 when Robert Southey wrote: "Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost."
Mom was right, of course, many times something I had said or done to hurt another came back to haunt me; made me wish I had kept quiet or not acted out. My chickens, indeed, had come home to roost. 😔
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