"You are one sick cookie, Mom."

"What?"

"You had a sign and you didn't listen."

My son was seated at our kitchen table. I was serving dinner.

"A sign?" I said. "What sign?"

"When you got it, it had a big dent in the side. You should not have taken it back."

"A dent? What dent?"

I was beginning to feel like a parrot.

My son sighed with all the world-weariness of his 14 years.

"The slow cooker, Mom. You got it as a gift from Grandma, remember? It came out of the box and it had a dent in the side. You just had to take it all the way back to the city and get another one."

"What? This is about the slow cooker?"

"Of course it's about the slow cooker. I hate slow-cooked food. Yet you keep using and using that slow cooker."

"But honey," I said, "with the slow cooker I can load it up with everything and not touch it again until dinner. That's the beauty of a slow cooker."

"Mom." My son frowned. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to me, that is one ugly appliance. You've tried chicken. I hate slow-cooked chicken. You've tried pork and beef in there. It all tastes bad. It either falls apart in shreds or it has the consistency of mush."

"I tried something new this time," I said.

"I already know I hate it. Can I have a hot dog?"

"No. I've used some new spices. Try it." I lifted the lid.

"It doesn't smell bad," my son said after a few cautious sniffs.

"Thank you, dear." I put a helping on his plate.

"What is this?"

"What do you think?" I untied my apron, drew the curtains across the window to the back field, and sat down at the table.

My son made a derisive noise. "No, really, what is it?"

I waited.

My son rolled his eyes. He took a cautious bite and chewed for awhile.

"I could eat this again," he said. He prodded at the food with his fork. "It's not mushy, and it looks like white meat."

"I'm glad I finally found a slow cooker recipe you like," I said. "There's plenty more where that came from."

And there was, I thought as I watched him chew.

There had been a sign, all right, but not the kind he meant.

I thought about the view out the back window.

Birds circled over the field.

One nice thing about the computer age is that when the kids come through the front door after school, they don't want to go outside. They'd rather use a keyboard: a preference that has been to my advantage over the last few days.

From that back kitchen window, I could see the furrow out in the field.

There was a small metal sphere (less than the size of one of those Volkswagen bugs that were so popular in the 1960's) partly buried at the end of the furrow. Even after two days, the sphere's shiny skin still steamed gently in the cold air.

On one side of the sphere was a small door that was propped open.

I thought about the chest-type deep freezer in one of the outbuildings. As of three days ago, it was nearly empty. Now it was full all the way up to the brim.

A few of them still moved nearby.

I had taken only the ones that moved. I buried the rest. After all, one has to have standards.

There was room in the refrigerator freezer. I would take care of any that were still moving in the morning.

Come to think of it, they really do look a lot like chickens.