His father looked inside.
“What is that?”
“Found them under two trees.”
His father picked up the jar.
“Japanese beetle grubs?”
“Some.”
“What are the others?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The father frowned.
The boy opened an agricultural booklet borrowed from the library.
He turned to a marked page.
“I think some are apple maggot pupae.”
The father looked at him.
“You think?”
“I need to check.”
His father set the jar down.
“Chickens were eating these?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
The boy pointed toward the jar.
“These are only the ones I grabbed first.”
His father stared at the page.
Then toward the orchard window.
“Still two weeks.”
“I know.”
At school, the boy could barely concentrate.
His notebook held math problems on one side.
On the other, he had drawn an orchard map.
Rows.
Tree numbers.
Chicken movement.
Wet areas.
Bare soil.
He wanted to know whether the hens preferred specific parts of the orchard.
His teacher noticed.
“What is that?”
The boy quickly closed the notebook.
“Nothing.”
“It looks very much like something.”
He reluctantly opened it.
She studied the diagram.
“Your orchard?”
“Yes.”
“What are the circles?”
“Where the chickens scratch most.”
She paused.
“You have chickens in the orchard?”
“Yes.”
“All the time?”
“For two weeks.”
His teacher smiled.
“That sounds like an experiment.”
The boy had not called it that.
Adults called things experiments when children did them.
When adults did the same thing, they called it management.
“What are you measuring?”
He thought.
“Bugs.”
“Anything else?”
He looked uncertain.
She pointed toward the diagram.
“If you want to know whether something changes, you need to know what it looked like before.”
That sentence changed the boy’s approach immediately.
After school, instead of simply watching the chickens, he chose ten trees.
Five where chickens were active.
Five behind a temporary barrier where chickens had not yet entered.
He placed small wooden markers near each.
He counted visible insect larvae in shallow soil samples.
He counted damaged leaf buds.
He photographed trunks using his mother’s old camera.
The pictures were poor.
But they were evidence.
That evening, his father found him measuring around a tree with a piece of string.
“What are you doing?”
“Comparing.”
“Comparing what?”
“Trees with chickens and trees without chickens.”
The father stood quietly.
Then he said, “Do not compact the soil too much around the roots.”
“I’m not.”
“And stop digging deeper than a couple inches.”
“Okay.”
The father started walking away.
Then stopped.
“Tree eleven had bad codling moth damage last year.”
The boy looked up.
“Which one?”
His father pointed.
“That row. Third from the fence.”
The boy wrote it down.
His father continued toward the barn.
It was not encouragement.
Not exactly.
But it was information.
The boy treated it the same way.
By day four, the chickens had transformed the orchard floor.
The loud farmer drove past.
He slowed.
Then backed up.
The farm boy was moving fencing.
The farmer leaned out the window.