![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Adventures in Suburban animal-keeping
May. 30th, 2013 05:37 pmBig thunderstorms last night, which I largely slept through due to exceptional levels of overtiredness. I sleepily let Maggie and the puppy out to pee after I woke up, and stood there with the puppy, blinking and in dire need of coffee. I looked up to where Maggie was, and noticed she was standing next to a chicken, which was not in its coop. The wheels turned in my head and I realized that the storm must have blown the coop open. I sprinted over to the dog and chicken show, the taste of adrenaline in my mouth.
Maggie had Whitey in her mouth, let her go, and ran and caught her again. I grabbed her by her collar and said a few choice words about my diminished opinion of her. The chickens took the opportunity to cross to the other side of the yard, with what seemed to me like a rather delayed panic. I brought Maggie into the house, feathers still stuck to her lips, and told Alexis what had happened. We went out together to survey the damage and get the hens back into the coop. One of the side panels--held in with gravity--had slipped off. The ground was festooned with white feathers.
We looked around the yard and the chickens were nowhere. We walked all around the half acre, looking in the bushes, the shed, the brush pile, but no. Alexis went up and over the brush pile back in the forgotten edges of the neighbors' yards, the domain of very tall and pointy weeds, old tires, and opossums. I walked around the block to see if the birds had hopped the fence and kept running. We couldn't find a sign of them. Alexis got in the car and widened the search a little, I contacted a neighbor on FaceBook and told her to keep an eye out.
I drank some coffee, Alexis came back and then went out to clean up the feathers, I joined her by the coop to figure out what to do next. That's when I saw the chickens in the front corner of the yard, coyly emerging from a tiny gap between a pine tree and the meeting of two fences. They had never left the yard at all, they simply found a small space and hunkered there very quietly.
Putting them back in the coop was not easy, as they have come to see me as Maggie's accomplice rather than their rescuer. Alexis is still their friend in their minds, so she went by the coop and opened the door, and I herded them back to it.
Maggie had Whitey in her mouth, let her go, and ran and caught her again. I grabbed her by her collar and said a few choice words about my diminished opinion of her. The chickens took the opportunity to cross to the other side of the yard, with what seemed to me like a rather delayed panic. I brought Maggie into the house, feathers still stuck to her lips, and told Alexis what had happened. We went out together to survey the damage and get the hens back into the coop. One of the side panels--held in with gravity--had slipped off. The ground was festooned with white feathers.
We looked around the yard and the chickens were nowhere. We walked all around the half acre, looking in the bushes, the shed, the brush pile, but no. Alexis went up and over the brush pile back in the forgotten edges of the neighbors' yards, the domain of very tall and pointy weeds, old tires, and opossums. I walked around the block to see if the birds had hopped the fence and kept running. We couldn't find a sign of them. Alexis got in the car and widened the search a little, I contacted a neighbor on FaceBook and told her to keep an eye out.
I drank some coffee, Alexis came back and then went out to clean up the feathers, I joined her by the coop to figure out what to do next. That's when I saw the chickens in the front corner of the yard, coyly emerging from a tiny gap between a pine tree and the meeting of two fences. They had never left the yard at all, they simply found a small space and hunkered there very quietly.
Putting them back in the coop was not easy, as they have come to see me as Maggie's accomplice rather than their rescuer. Alexis is still their friend in their minds, so she went by the coop and opened the door, and I herded them back to it.
