Salve Chicken....

Does the word Salve derive from the same root as saliva?  They both sound suspiciously latinate.

This herbal salve my daughter makes out of, I am assuming, beeswax, oil and various secret greens, is a healing balm of miraculous properties.  Last winter I fell on the wood stove searing my hand completely.  Terrible 2nd degree burns, and painful as hell, this salve healed it up in under a week.....[PSA]

Today I was trying to get close enough to check Buck's comb for more damage or infection [without getting a pointy object in my face for my trouble] and saw that he is doing vastly better.  I'm thinking of trying it out on Barbie who has been mercilessly pecked, plucked, clawed and pummeled by Buck and the other hens.  It does not pay to be Buck's favorite, it reminds me of those girls in high school and the "cheap" ones in junior high school, who probably were really victims themselves, though we didn't see it that way at the time] who wore their hickies like flags to show that someone found them attractive and branded them. 

The ladies have not one issue with staggering around the yard looking bedraggled.  They wear their loss of feathers with philosophical acceptance.  They are the housewives in flowered housedresses, aprons covered with flour and gravy, terrycloth mules on their flat feet, pouchy eyes and puppet lines.  

Still, if I place a mirror in the yard next to their coop or the trees by the mailbox where they like to sit and chat, they will stand and admire.

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Buck, of course, believes himself to be the grandest chicken in the jungle, no matter what his feathers are about.