Trump is everywhere.
Bad hair costumes. Pumpkins carved into “Trumpkins.” Cats coiffed like Trump. Sushi with salmon comb-overs.
It was only a matter of time before his chicken doppelganger came strutting into our collective conscience.
Meet Miss Phyllis.
She’s a white crested black Polish chicken, an ornamental breed known for its wacky hairdos.
The hen is the poultry version of The Donald.
She and her sidekick, Diller, live in Snohomish with about 50 other assorted fowl friends.
They share a Trump mansion of a chicken house. It’s an opulent pad, measuring 8 feet by 16 feet, red with white-trimmed windows and flower boxes.
The place is wired with security cameras, doors are on automatic timers and a net covers the yard to fend off hawks.
This cushy coop belongs to Brian Baisch, a blogger known as The Real Housewife of Snohomish County. He uses social media to connect with other stay-at-home spouses about the joys and demands of domesticity.
Baisch, 35, is married to a doctor at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett. While his husband works long hours, Baisch cooks, cleans, sews and volunteers (he’s a counselor at Camp Erin, a bereavement camp for kids who have lost a loved one).
He even crochets chicken potholders. These look like something your grandmother made: cute, dainty and too pretty to use. He sells them on Etsy (2 for $13) along with crocheted scarves, bibs and stuffed toys. He also makes rolling pins with a wood lathe.
Like many housewives, he’s handy with power tools as well as kitchen tools.
He showed me the model for the chicken house: a plastic toy that fits in his hand.
“This is the chicken coop from my farm set when I was a kid,” Baisch said. “I came up with plans in my head and built it on the fly.”
The result is the size of a tiny house for humans, but inhabited by chickens. The cameras let him watch what’s happening on a mobile device. That’s right, he has a live streaming coop cam. Sometimes he shares reality chick TV online.
Hens named Oprah, Laverne and Shirley are among the diverse flock of stars.
“I like to have one of everything, to keep it interesting. I don’t like looking at a sea of the same birds,” he said of his multicultural chickens who come from all walks of pecking orders.
Baisch had only three chickens and two dogs when he and the doc moved last year from the Edmonds ‘burbs to the 5-acre homestead in rural Snohomish.
Now there are also four geese honking, eight ducks quacking and three goats bleating. A miniature donkey might be next. So, too, might a name change from Real Housewife to Rural Housewife?
“I turned the corner from hobby to farmer,” Baisch said, “and it’s a big corner to turn. When you have three chickens in your yard they’re very much pets, but now they maybe become food for us.”
That’s right — some wind up in the oven.
Even Miss Phyllis?
Not to worry. The chick with the Trump hair is safe. She’s destined for bigger things than dinner.
Send What’s Up With That? suggestions to Andrea Brown at 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @reporterbrown. Read more What’s Up With That? at www.heraldnet.com/whatsup.
He’s a busy housewife, and still finds time to crochet potholders, build chicken coop &volunteer. #RealHousewives pic.twitter.com/d7YXEPfm0L
— Andrea Brown (@reporterbrown) October 5, 2015
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