Chicken stereo

This morning I was awakened by the sound of a young rooster practicing his crowing, half a crow sounding like er-AH-erga, strangled at the end. I wondered if a half-grown member of the flock down the street had escaped. They had hens and a rooster; therefore they could make more roosters. The sound seemed to come from their direction but closer, maybe my front yard. I looked out the window by my bed but didn’t see anyone.

The hens down the street started calling buck-buck-BUCK-BUCK. They start that noise when excited about something and, like dogs barking, keep going even when they have forgotten what they’re excited about. I listened carefully—noise from chickens down the street coming in the bedside window; noise from my chickens coming in the window across the room. Where, then, was the young rooster?

Later in the day I heard the noise in my back yard. As hens are apt to do when there is no rooster, one is attempting to crow. But which? I suspect one of the Polish chickens is asserting her right to be Head Hen. I hope lucky accident shows me which one is crowing because I’m not going to spend the day watching them to find out.

Matilda's dinner

I went to the pet store today to get a couple of mice for Matilda the corn snake and meal worms for Chilibelina the leopard gecko, who is here for the summer. As before, the meal worms came in a plastic tub with a lid and the mice came in a box with pictures of mice, budgies and hamsters on the sides. I got home and opened the mouse box to find four teeny red eyes looking at me and two quivering pink noses and white whiskers being raised inquiringly. One of the mice wore a little brown mouse poop on his head—you would be amazed at how much poop two mice produce in twenty minutes.

Instead of saying “frozen adult mice,” I must have said, “adult mice” at the store. Frozen is generally the default state for feeder mice, so I didn’t even consider that I’d find live mice in the box. Matilda has never encountered a live adult mouse. Most likely, the several generations of captive-bred corn snakes from which she’s descended haven’t, either.

Reflecting that the cost of gas was making these very expensive mice, I drove back to the store to exchange Chuck and Lola for two frozen mice. Frozen mice don’t have names and can’t bite back.

The hens are landscaping

Sitting in my second floor study, I can see the back yard where the former owners’ play area carpeted deep in wood chips meets the lawn. There is no barrier. The chips stayed on their side, the lawn on its, until I started letting the chickens out. Now the chips are creeping across the lawn, thrown to scatter like confetti behind the chickens when they dig. Too late, I realized I can’t mow the area of mixed chips and grass, now several feet across, unless I want to wipe out the mower blade. Oops.

The outside always looks darker from inside than it actually is. At 8:10 I thought the chickens might be settled for the night and went out for the ritual of lifting protesting but relaxed bantams from the nest boxes and putting bantams inside the hen house before shutting the door. Getting them at dusk instead of full dark is preferable because I don’t have to bring a flashlight and there’s enough light outside for them to find a perch on their own.

When I got there, three of the four hens came out of the house, a little sleepy, like children in their pajamas wandering down to the living room for one last attempt at staying up late. DartMouth was the only one to stay on her perch. We hung around a bit together until they decided there was nothing exciting happening (no food) and they might as well go back to bed. Then I put the banties inside. Edna seems a little better with this than Zora. Zora is a fully committed sitter and grumbled mightily. She was still grumbling when I shut the door, leaving her to find her way to a perch.

Hen in lockdown

Zora and Edna still huddle together in a nest at night, so I have to pull each one out, kicking and grumbling, and place her on a perch in the coop. During the afternoon when I open the door for them to run to the dust spa, they all charge through the doorway together, except for one day when Zora ran here...



..and couldn't figure out that she should have gone in the opposite direction here:



where she paced back and forth, apparently expecting a door to magically appear. Being broody does not sharpen the brain.

The moods of broody banties

Both the bantams, Zora and Edna, are still feelin’ broody but Zora seems to take it more seriously. When I open the gate of the run, Edna watches the other hens scamper out. I think she can’t stand sitting there seeing what a great time they’re having, so she hops down to the ground and flies across the lawn, screaming like a falling plane, to join the crowd. Eventually, Zora comes out for a while (gotta get those dust baths) before returning to the nest to sit on nothing because I’ve taken the eggs.

They both want to spend the night in the hutch where the nest boxes are. The coop itself is a different “building” because each is too small to contain both roosts and nesting areas. Every evening, I have to stretch my arms through the awkwardly small opening in the hutch to lift out reluctant Zora and Edna, one at a time, and carry her over to the coop. They don’t make the angry, whining noises of large hens; they sound more like the way puppies grunt when you pick them up. Another difference: Edna will perch or sit on my hand; Zora is less tame even when broody-sleepy and has to be contained in both hands.

Zora stands on the coop floor looking bewildered—more bewildered than a chicken usually looks if you take note of the body language. If it’s not dark out, I let them figure out that they’re in the coop and eventually join the others on a perch. When it’s dark, I place them on a perch because I don’t know if they’ll venture up on their own.

Which brings up the question of how well can chickens see in the dark, anyway? Having really poor night vision would be a reason why they stay put when it’s dark.

A chicken makes a decision

It is axiomatic that people with small flocks of chickens are easily entertained. It is also true that chickens don’t make decisions because decisions require a consciousness that chickens do not have, which is why people find them entertaining in the first place. Consider my use of the word “decision” as a metaphor for the chicken thought process.

Yesterday I watched Zora, the black bantam Modern, try to decide what to do after I opened the door of the pen. She had been sitting in the nest. Like all the others, she rushed out the door but instead of running across the yard with them, she stopped. She took a few steps back toward the nest, then forward toward the others, then a few steps back. She hesitated. Back and forth again, unable to decide. Hunt with the others? Follow her instinct to remain broody on the nest? Try to understand the impossibility of choosing between these equal urges.

Fortunately she was rescued in the form of a small worm appearing in the dirt in front of her. When she bent to get it, the distraction wiped out all other thoughts and she continued scratching and pecking, gradually joining the others, leaving only me to remember what had happened.

Snow, April evening shouldn't be allowed

Insane weather

I'm personally insulted by the snow. It never ever snows in Seattle in the middle of April. It began with hail, slush and ice falling from afternoon to early evening, now regular snow sticking to roofs and trees and the lawn. To see snow falling at 8 pm before the sun is due to set--well, if other people around here are not unnerved, I'd like to hear about that.

The chickens go into their house, then step outside looking bewildered, as if the snow should have reconsidered and gone away while they were indoors. They whine. I whine. I locked them in early tonight.

Last week I was wearing shorts and listening to the frogs in the evening. Yesterday evening it was not too chilly to stand outside and breathe in the perfume of all the blossoms. This evening I'm wearing fleece and wondering how many frogs and young birds are dying in this sudden cold. It's as if everything has gone into reverse.

The invasion

With the training completed, the hens are growing bolder. They began by roaming through the ivy-covered slope that separates the upper from the lower parts of the back yard. Then, like an invading army breaching the walls of a fort, up they came over the edge onto the cement patio. The patio pattern reminds me of crazy-paving. Instead of being flat cement, there are irregular grooved lines to give the appearance of paving stones. Those grooves make wonderful (for the hens) collection points for dirt, leaf debris, moss, and bugs. Now the dog pooper-scooper is also a chicken pooper-scooper.

Next, they’ll be knocking at the back door.

Basic training is complete.

The six hens sing and crowd up to the pen doorway when they see me coming. Unable to disobey their request for treats, I always bring a scoopful of scratch feed or scraps from the kitchen. If I let them out and dash across the lawn, they all run after me as if there is some urgent reason to follow my feet. When I stop, the feet are suddenly of no interest, for they immediately start scratching in the lawn and pecking at bugs.

The weather here has been 8—10 degrees colder than normal the past week or more. Snow stuck on the lawns and roofs last Friday; this is unusual enough to be an insult.

By Sunday afternoon the snow was gone and the sun warmed a few areas of the yard, though it was cold in the shade. (I must make a new pen because the current one is in a dark, damp side of the yard.) When I let the chickens out, they immediately began sunbathing, pressing one side of their bodies into the lawn while extending the opposite side’s wing and leg, necks stretched out, looking like dedicated tanners or hens in the last act of a convulsive death.