Tag Archives: chickens

GOOD MORNING

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Molly LOVED being an only child after our last FELV (feline leukemia) foster died, so we felt the wee bit sorry for her when Mama and Suzi arrived within a week of each other. Molly—who does not have FELV—rolled her eyes and went out the cat flap.

Mama went upstairs and established my office as her domain. Suzi went under the bed and emerged a couple of days later to fall hard for Bruce, our big pit bull baby. By the end of the day they were sharing his dog bed.

Bruce and Suzi

Not wanting the FELV twins to go out, we ended up doing surreptitious midnight-and-morning door openings for Molly. The neighbors must be convinced by now that we’re dealing drugs, but it kept Molly happy, and we could hear her scratching if I worked from the kitchen, so let it ride.

Yesterday morning dawned mild and glorious, a balmy breeze promising spring. Molly wanted out, and right behind her went Bruce. It took me a minute (I was on my first cup of coffee) to realize why Bruce had eight legs. Suzi was quite literally walking underneath him.

Crap. Well, the weather was mild, so I left the door open to ease tiny Suzi’s use of the heavy cat flap. A minute later I heard the flap and figured it was all good.

Nope. That was Mama, making a break for it.

Day was breaking, which meant the chickens were waking. It is our custom to put scraps for them each morning, so first thing they do is come running up to the back porch. They appeared on the horizon just as I was trying to coax the somewhat bewildered Suzi back inside. Mama took off to chase the chickens, then turned tail and went up the nearest tree when they chased her. Don’t get between a chicken and breakfast.

Suzi dove for cover under our porch as Molly sat nearby, cat-laughing with her tail tucked around her paws, eyes in slits. The chickens feasted, then went off to dig up the yard.

I taped the flap up so Suzi could come back inside once things calmed down, then went to gather eggs. One of the chickens followed me—after all I am the bearer of scraps. When I went into the house and began to glass eggs, I heard something come through the open hole that had been the cat flap. When I turned around, one of the chickens stood in the kitchen, watching me preserve eggs in the lime solution of a large glass jar. I could see the thought bubble above her head: So that’s why they keep disappearing!

Chasing the chicken out, I almost ran over Suzi trying come back inside. She retreated, shrieking, and I heard a purr: Molly was watching. I’m surprised she didn’t have a bowl of popcorn at her side, because the bubble above her head clearly said, Best. Movie. Ever.

We left the flap taped up. The chickens did not try again; I feel certain the little white hen told them what we were doing to their children, and they are plotting.

Suzi came in of her own accord. Mama eventually was coaxed down from the tree and carried inside, safe from the horrible flying things who clucked in an unpleasant way as I passed them with Mama in my arms. She shrank against me.

Molly sat outside on the porch awhile longer, in case there was a sequel.

How’s your morning going?  

NOW WE ARE SIX

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To start this story properly, you have to understand that my parents are chaos magnets. Accept this and move on; I have, and it makes life simpler.

My parents called me a few days before my monthly visit to their house, where I do odd jobs: gutter cleaning, patching roof holes, running errands, helping with some decisions like where to eat dinner and whether they should sell their home and move in to an assisted living community – that kind of thing.

“Can you take these chickens that showed up here?”

Beats last month’s question: “how are you at spackling?”

Turns out, the next door neighbors had been feeding some “cute little birds, like rock doves or something,” but they were going on an extended holiday from before Thanksgiving right through Christmas. They wanted my parents to continue throwing corn to the “cute little birds.”

Which were bantam chickens, three of them. My dad said fine, hopped onto the Internet, and researched bantams. Two hours later he had five sacks of feed, a stack of corn cakes, a jar of meal worms, and a shovel.

“What’s the shovel for?” my mother asked.

“They dig into the ground to make nests for themselves and it’s frozen so I thought I’d dig a couple spaces up for them.”

My mother secured the shovel, and my dad tossed corn all over the driveway. The trio took up residence in the thick holly bush just beyond it. All was well (and I was blissfully unaware of the poultry presence at the parental palace) until one day there were only two.

Searching proved useless. Not even a feather remained. That’s when Dad called. “They’ll get eaten. Can you take them?”

My trip to the parental home was at the beginning of a travel gig for work; I wouldn’t be back home for six more days. And couldn’t really see the chickens waiting patiently in the car or hotel for that long so….

We hatched a plan. Dad would try to catch them on Friday, the day I was going home again, and I would come back and get them before heading to Chez BeckWelch.

He called Friday morning. They beat the bushes, searched the hedges, but the scrawny little things were nowhere to be seen. “They must have been listening on the phone line,” my dad joked—and then thought about it and went out and yes, the little miscreants were roosting up in the magnolia tree that intertwined with the phone lines, just above his head in the front yard.

“Maybe Sunday?” Dad said to me. I said sure, figuring this was never going to happen.

My first full day home from the long week of work travel, I dug into some domestic chores and had almost forgotten about the potential Chicken Run until the phone rang about noon.

“They walked right into the trap following me with a piece of corn cake. We can meet halfway.”

Halfway, when you are trying to negotiate with a father who is 1) hard of hearing 2) convinced he knows all the exits between Michigan and Florida and 3) eager to get the job done meant I drove two hours and he drove one, but we did both find the correct Cracker Barrel. Which is something of a miracle since he can’t actually work his mobile phone.

We parked around back and he handed me the caged chickens. The pair were peeping loudly in their fear, so I assume the people who watched the exchange figured the restaurant had run out of chicken and called a local farmer. No one looked concerned.

Home I drove with the now-quiet bantams, and introduced them to their new friends, the Leghorns. Leghorns outweigh bantams about 2:1, so we left the little girls in a cat carrier overnight to let them get used to the co-op, er, coop. And avoid getting sat on.

Today the new girls are running around the yard, investigating brush piles, digging pits, and that perennial favorite of chickens everywhere, pecking the hosta beds to death. Oh well. They are cute, the new girls, and our four bigger hens are pretty much leaving them alone. So far so good. Chicken Run: The Holiday Adventure has not turned out to be a horror film.