Remember that we have chickens? I sometimes forget, given that they’re in the faraway of our yard, and I have little to do with them. They’re generally the 500Jerk Spouse’s domain. But I’m in charge of them this week. Nominally. So I’ve been feeding them and watering them and chasing them around. Mostly the last. Chickens are either smart enough to know they would rather be free of coop confines or too dumb to get back in, I’m not sure which. At any rate, I’ve recently spent a lot of time in my business clothes crawling through bamboo, encouraging wayward hens to return to the coop.
And do they return? No. And why are they out in the first place? Because our coop has so many holes in it that the chickens just squeeze through and leave. They rip that rear-view mirror off and hightail it for the road. My only lure is chicken scratch, which the increasingly impatient 500Jerk Spouse tells me is like crack cocaine for chickens. And it’s true--when the hens see me coming with a green plastic cup full of scratch, they come bounding back. Trouble is, they’re on the other side of the coop looking through the fence. And here’s the amazing thing: They do not know how to walk around the coop and get inside. They just jam their beady-eyed heads through the chain link fence and stare at me hungrily. BWAWK, BWAWK, BWAWK. When I drop to my belly and sniper crawl through the bamboo to get them, they bound away again. Oh, it's never-ending chicken fun, I tell you.
At any rate, as of 8AM this morning:
Chickens outside the coop: 4
Chickens inside the coop: 11
11/15: 73%
Grade: C
1 comment:
I've been wondering how my eggs were "graded." Someday I'm going to have to request a consult from you on chicken-rearing; it's one of my life goals to have a little flock.
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