Chicken Tales: Fowl Language Warning

Yesterday, fall was in the air. Â I sat down in the maple shade of mid-afternoon with my legs full out on the stone pavers on the walk outside the back door. Both hens (the two survivors who remain after last winter’s toll on one and a dog too quick for the other chicken hiding in the grass) were browsing along the branch where the Jewel Weed blooms. Its dangling orange flowers produce the exploding pods that offer the seeds that the hens so enjoy pecking up from the damp, dark earth underneath.

I had too successfully cooled off the house with the open windows overnight, so the warmth of the sun was pleasant and welcomed. Within a minute of my settling into basking position, Dionne (the black hen) looked up from her foraging along the branch down below the big lilac and came running my way like the family dog. I am not flattered by this because her quest for proximity is only the result of the fact that I regularly reward her for pretending to be my friend by turning over a rock or log for her rapid-fire pecking-up of a few pill bugs, spiders or slugs. (I turned a rock for her last week and found a copperhead!) She is using me, but I’ll take attention any way I can get it.

[I should mention that our farm ecology also includes a feeding guild between chickens and the dog: he kills the lawn with his morning waterings, then the hens come along later and easily scratch up the dead grass for the seeds, grubs and earthworms, creating a patchy lawn effect we refer to as Mange Turf.]

Dionne proceeded to hop the one step onto the porch (alas, we swore early on we’d NEVER let them get close to the house) and disappeared out of my view, walking around behind me. And then she promptly collapsed in a controlled fall over on her side. She just lay there, eyes open, her top wing splayed open above her in the dappled sun like a fan. Had she had a stroke? (We don’t know how long to expect these birds, our first flock, to live; maybe this was the end?)

Within a minute, the other hen strutted up along side Dionne on the porch and assumed the same stricken, side-lying position – which I came to realize was a chicken’s way of enjoying the sunshine, just like I was. So there were the three of us, man and hens, basking–-each in his or her own way–-on a pleasantly warm, sunny, early fall afternoon.

Somebody shoulda had a camera.

We hope soon to replenish the flock to four–-annd to bring some egg-laying discipline back for the two misbehaving survivors of last year’s survivors. They have taken to hiding their eggs any random spot they choose and good luck locating the nest du jour until there are 8 or 10 brown eggs of questionable life-span somewhere in the tall grass. Or under the truck parked at the edge of the yard. Or more recently and strongly preferred now–-in the cool shade of the crawl space under the front porch.

Yesterday, after Ann’s fourth grumbling belly crawl to fetch the secret eggs, at risk of yellow jackets and copper heads in the darkness under the porch, I made sure that the crafty Dionne could not slip in around my defenses and get back under the front porch like she has done several times, even after I thought “now that’ll fix her!”

As I sit here, she’s petulantly protesting her successful eviction (that’s why they call it chicken wire, deary) and taking running lunges to force her scrawny body through the 3” holes in the plastic trellis that covers the rest of the crawl space access.

She won’t give up. I peek out the glass of the front door and see now that she’s trying a “from above” tactic, peering down between the flooring boards of the front porch with one eye, looking for a way to shape-shift down between them to join her precious darling ova.

The maternal instinct is irrepressible, and her futile efforts for the past half hour have been heart-rending to watch and nerve-wracking to hear. She’s back now to her incessant scolding, and I am pretty certain I am the object of her fowl language.

By Fred First
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