The Dynamic Duo

Finally, after almost a year, I have gotten around to uploading some of my photos to a web album and finding an online photo editing program. I am really excited about it…then again, I get really excited over finding a penny in a parking lot. Nevertheless, what this means for you, dear readers, is more photos! I find it a little narcissistic on my part to assume that I can captivate you with only my written words and no photos. BO-RING. So here we go!

If you have read my old posts, you’ll remember Wayward Jones, the chicken who was infamous for running circles and otherwise getting herself in all sorts of hijinks. She also, unfortunately, met her end when a neighborhood dog carried her off.

A few months ago, I got an email about someone wanting to relocate a couple of roosters. One was a breed called a Showgirl. Showgirl chickens are a cross between a Silkie and a Naked Neck breed. The result, after several generations of re-crossing with Silkies, is a bird that looks primarily like a Silkie, but with a naked neck. Thus, here is the result. I am happy to introduce Ernie The Wonder Chicken, our new farm mascot:

As with Wayward, I knew from the beginning that Ernie was going to be different. I’m not sure exactly what it was (besides the fact he looks like a turkey mated with a cotton ball), but something immediately struck me about his personality. One day I decided to give ol’ Ernie a bath. Yes, really. His feathers were stained a little from some red clay at the former owner’s house. No, he wasn’t sculpting, by the way…we just happen to have some seriously red dirt around here. Anyway, I took Ernie to the tub and scrubbed him down with baby shampoo. He seemed to be, well, enjoying it. Either that, or he was in some serious shock. The fact is, he didn’t move through the entire process. Then came the blow dryer (well, I couldn’t very well leave him wet, could I?). To those people who believe that chickens have no personalities, all I can tell you is that you just haven’t met the right ones yet. Ernie is the first metrosexual rooster I’ve ever seen. He clucked and strutted and fluffed himself through the entire drying process like a teenage girl primping for a date. It became immediately apparent that this was going to be a funny bird.

Now that we’ve had him a while, Ernie’s personality has really come out. He is not afraid of people, and though he doesn’t always want to be caught, when he is, he will just lay in your arms and crow, if he’s in the mood. He doesn’t struggle, which is pretty unusual for most roosters. He has also rode with us to town a few times, even going through the drive through at Chicken Express (and living to tell the tale). Just recently, he has adopted a baby hen as his own. Not as his mate, but more as his own chick, which is odd. He will actually catch bugs for her and lay them at her feet, as a mother hen would. They sleep together, eat together, and are rarely a few feet apart. I was so impressed with Ernie’s attitude that I bought 17 baby Silkies, just so that he could have some ‘ladyfriends’…and hopefully make more little Ernies.

Now, on to another new member of the farm. We were at the local Atwood’s several weeks back, when a baby chick caught my eye. It was just like Ernie, only in miniature. Please meet “Poindexter”:

Poindexter is a Transylvanian Naked Neck, also known as a Turken. It was once believed that they were a cross between a turkey and a chicken. (not true) Here’s an interesting article on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of naked necks. Poindexter exhibited extreme friendliness even from the beginning, when most chicks run away from you. Now that I know more about the Naked Necks, I am seriously thinking about eventually switching my flock to them. They do better in hot weather (and good in cold, even), they lay about 180 brown eggs a year and are great foragers. I noticed that as he (or she) grew older, Dexter could snap a gnat out of the air with ease. Here is another glimpse:

See? Even chickens enjoy springtime flowers. Now for one final shot:

Enjoy!

Fighting the System…AKA To Kill A Mockingbird

I’ve told you previously that there is a pest for any fruit/veggie that you wish to grow. They’re relentlessly trying to eat the plant before you do. For a gardener, it’s just a case of winning the battle, but never the war.

Last night, I thought it would be a good time to check for tomato hornworms. If you’ve never heard of them, they grow to an enormously freaky size and can eat half of your tomato plant in about as much time as it would take you to slurp a spaghetti noodle. I ended up finding 4, which was surprising, since I hadn’t seen ANY earlier that day, but that’s kind of the hornworm’s M.O.: You won’t notice anything amiss one minute, and the next, half of your plant is eaten. Using my own “CSI: Tomato” methods, I deduced that the eaten parts of the plant had been done extremely recently and located fresh worm ‘frass’ (aka: POOP). Sure enough, there was a nice, 4.5″ worm clinging to my plant. Actually, 3 of them (one was small). Grrr….The sentence handed down was ‘Death by Chicken’.

So today, I was looking out into the garden and a family of mockingbirds decided to build another nest in my blackberry bush. One of the babies from the first nest was picking my berries off, one by one. Mind you, I haven’t even had ONE berry myself this year! I screamed, “Hey, (insert synonym for male donkey)!”, and ran at the bird with a stick in my hand. He fluttered off, looking at me with disgust and a sly look that said, “I’ll be back as soon as the front door closes”. Which I’m sure that he was. So, I got out in the 90+ degree heat and started attempting to put a net over what was left of the berries. Not a good idea to try by yourself. I ended up popping off about 5 nice looking berries when the netting stuck to them, then the netting got stuck to every thorn on the berry vine, not to mention every stick, rock and piece of grass in the way. Sweating profusely and tired of fighting the stupid net, I went back inside. I’m sure that the mockingbird was back before I had stepped 2 feet into the house. Sometimes you have to admit a certain level of defeat. However, they don’t know about my next move, which is plastic snakes. I put a fake snake in my plum tree to ward off the birds. SO FAR, it is working. Hell, I almost peed myself one night when I was walking by the tree, looked up, and thought I was eye to eye with a snake. And I’m not even remotely afraid of snakes! So, I hope the birds feel the same way. I just hope that they can’t read the “Made In China” stamp on the snake. Then the cat’s way out of the bag.

The Old Grey Mare…

It’s true. She AIN’T what she used to be. I’m mad at myself for not getting my rear on here and blogging. Irritated that I’m too lazy/tired to upload you some pics. But it’s spring, and on the farm, that’s super busy time. Please accept my apologies!

Well, life on the farm is back to its usual hectic pace. We bought 15 broiler chickens after the junior livestock show, and butchered and processed nine of them. Please be assured that it is the best tasting chicken EVER. And, they probably lived out the best week of their life here. If you are ever interested in processing your own birds, I highly suggest watching videos on Youtube by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. I did a mini refresher course before this batch of birds just so I didn’t forget anything.

I bought eight Broad Breasted White turkeys for butchering later this year. I plan to grind the breast and leg meat. I just bought 3 Narragansett turkey poults for breeding purposes. They are a ‘heritage’ breed of turkey, and can breed normally (broad breasted birds need AI to get the job done), and supposedly have a better flavor than the BB turkeys. Earlier this year, I was given a Showgirl rooster whom we named Ernie. Ernie is, without a doubt, the funniest chicken I have ever seen…he even ‘one ups’ the famed Wayward Jones. I knew he was gonna be a really special one when I gave him a bath with no chicken complaints and….he loves the blow dryer. Don’t ask me how these critters find me, but they do. Now I have 17 baby Silkies, hopefully at least some of which are females, who are destined to be Ernie’s ‘lady friends’. Yes, I want to make more of these odd looking chickens. On purpose.

Then, the other day, I was at a feed store when I saw the ugliest chick I’d ever seen. And so, ‘Poindexter’ came home with us for a whopping $1.79. He/she is a Naked Neck, and bless it’s heart, it’s not even normal. Its wings are deformed and it will never be able to fly. See…they find me, I swear it.

A few weeks ago, we bought a 250 pound (or so) Hampshire pig and had him sent off to the processor’s. We got back 145 pounds of meat. Fifty seven pounds of breakfast sausage, a ton of chops, 2 racks of ribs, soup bones, 2 roasts, and about 8 ham steaks. I can honestly tell you that the sausage is the best sausage EVER. Also, I know that this pig was raised in a pasture and not in a cramped, filthy cage somewhere a la Smithfield! (Take that, Paula Deen) It makes it taste that much better.

In gardening news, I am trying a trellis method for my tomatoes this year. Thus far, it looks great. I am happy with it. I hate tomato cages! I also am experimenting with mulching right now. I am using newspaper and cardboard over the ground, then covering it with mulch on my new beds/garden plots. I HATE BERMUDA GRASS. I hope every piece of it dies in my yard, seriously. It is the bane of my existence!!! So, I am hoping that my lazy-man’s method of weed killing will work. So far, it seems to be doing well. We added 3 new ‘gardens’ to the front yard this year. I have planted a coupld of apple trees along our garden wire fence to try and create some espalier trees. We shall see. I noticed last week some huge inflorescence on my Champanel grape vine that I really whacked back in February. I am trying to train it along the fence, as well. I still have a ‘Carlos’ bronze muscadine to plant on the other side of the fence.

I ripped out the cabbages and (completely non-productive) Brussels sprouts today. Amazing how every year I discover a new insect that’s trying to eat what I want to eat. This year, the calico bugs were covering the cabbages and sprouts along with the dang cabbage worms. Sigh. Every year, I think: Are you freakin’ kidding me? Another cabbage pest??? I’ve already had it out with cabbage maggots, cabbage loopers, cabbage webworms, and now calico bugs? I’m surprised that cabbage isn’t worth its weight in gold. And, this year, for whatever reason, the cutworms were HORRIBLE. I lost more onions and tater plants to cutworms than ever. Ernie, however, was more than happy to provide the intruders with the famed “Death By Chicken” sentence handed down from me.

So, now to wrap up this boring update. Out to the greenhouse I go to water the plants again.

It ain’t always easy

The other night, as I was picking dried poop off of a baby chick’s rear end (whereupon it immediately pooped on me), my husband remarked how country living isn’t always what it seems. We had just had several families out for the day and the kids ran around looking at all of the animals and running all over the place. Here was some hatching eggs, there was a brooder full of adorable baby chicks. Over here, you can pet some baby rabbits, over there, you can feed the chickens. But, what people don’t get to see is the day to day upkeep and maintenance as well as the issues that pop up from time to time around a farm.

Those cute baby chicks have to be checked on a few times a day to check for ‘pasty butt’ ….an actual situation which requires me to wash off/pick off baby chick poo on their hind end so that they can keep on going Number 2 without getting ‘backlogged’. I have to watch for egg picking and eating in the big chicken coop, as well as watch out for any sign of predation or disease. We went through a six week patch of avian pox (amazingly NOT called ‘chicken pox’) with the chickens and ended up losing two of my roosters. One of my cockatiels in my aviary got a little down and stopped eating the other day, so I had to separate her and medicate her. My baby bunnies got diarrhea after my kids fed them a huge handful of weeds. Once again, I became the resident ‘Poo Picker’ and had to clean bunny poo off of a couple of unwilling patients. (they’re now used to weeds; it just takes some time) A few weeks back, we lost my oldest duck and the unsinkable Wayward Jones, presumably to a stray dog, when they both hopped over the fence.

This morning, Jason called to tell me that he had found Garfield in the road, limp and still warm. I had only seen him close to the road once, last year, and after the way I went screaming and running at him like an absolute madwoman I thought that surely he’d never attempt that again. You’d think that fences and gates would mean something , but sometimes they just don’t. And, I am not one of those people that believe in keeping an animal indoors 100% of the time. In fact, I think it’s just plain ridiculous. It makes as much sense to me as people who never go outside…and frankly, that scares me.

If you have read older posts, you will remember that he is our furry alarm clock cat that always managed to beat Jason to the bathroom. Garfield enjoyed sunning in the front garden and following us all over the place. We’d let him out in the morning with the dogs, weather permitting, and bring him in before we left the house and at nightfall. He was always where we were and usually either curled up at our feet or in a chair, or meowing to let us know about whatever was aggravating him at the moment. Usually, it was because the food in his dish was more than five minutes old. Last Friday night (more accurately, Saturday morning), at 3:30 a.m., he let out an extremely loud “MEEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWW” which woke both me and Jason up out of a dead sleep. We both thought we were dreaming until we realized that surely it wasn’t possible that both of us were simultaneously dreaming about a screaming cat. I suppose that Garfield felt neglected or he felt that his food was unpalatable after sitting out since about 8 p.m. and wanted to let us know about it.

And that’s really the last story that I have to tell you about “Jason’s ‘Furson'”.

I could tell you about how, yesterday, I almost took a picture of him as he was in his typical upside-down, on-his-back position while napping on his favorite chair, his paws curled up on his chest and chin stuck up in the air. Or how a couple of days ago, he and both of the small dogs were all three curled up in a single chair without an inch to spare. Or how he meowed at us most every time he saw us…telling us with his funny flat face and round orange eyes how inadequate we were as cat owners. Or how his fur looked as though it was glowing at dusk each day in an impossibly fluorescent shade of orange. Or how, one day, as I was explaining to the kids what ‘felting’ was, I took some of his fur we had just combed out and, rubbing it together, made a weird orange felt ‘ball’ and laughed at the idea of ‘cat felt’.

But today, I am telling you how I cried when I looked in the litterbox and realized this would be the last time I’d get to scoop his poop.

I never thought I’d ever miss scooping cat poop.

I looked at the cat dish (still half-full with cat kibble…unpalatable to his standards, I am sure) and realized how I would never again hear his signature meow or see him stretch up to claw the crap out of the edge of my cabinet as he always did when I scooped out fresh food. I’ll miss the way he always ran in front of us, somehow usually managing to cause one of us to stumble in the process, his fluffy orange striped tail flicking in cat laughter at us. I’ll miss the hairballs drifting across my living room floor like tiny orange tumbleweeds. I’ll even miss the early morning caterwauling. I”ll miss poking fun at him in our best British voices. I am positive that if he could have, he would have had a monocle and a top hat and have a British accent and speak to us with sheer disapproval at our lackluster attempts at ‘cat parenting’.

The problem with pets is that you are opening yourself up to something that, in all likelihood, you will outlive even at their full life expectancy. What makes it worse is that it is very easy to get attached to such a creature. Especially a charismatic cat.

Country life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes, it’s just plain damn hard.

The unsinkable Wayward Jones

If you aren’t familiar with Wayward, you’ll need to do some reading first. Simply type ‘wayward’ into the search bar at the top, and read through the first 3 posts listed.

But if you ARE familiar with her….

So about a week and a half ago we had a good ol’ Texas-style Arctic front blow through here. That is, one minute it’s a little chilly and the next minute it’s mind-numbingly COLD, your blood coagulates with ice shards, and any exposed body part will likely fall off of your person. These climatic changes are preceded by a 200 mile-per-hour wind and rain that falls horizontally. (maybe I’m exaggerating just a tad)

The chickens were out and about that day, and I really thought nothing of it.

Backstory:

Wayward, after the death of her sister, has become a most ‘chicken-y’ chicken. She no longer tries to thumb for rides to Mexico, and, with the exception of running circles around pine trees, is pretty much a normal chicken. If there even is such a thing.

So, imagine my surprise when I get a call early the morning following the Arctic blast from my neighbor, Mrs. M.

Mrs. M: There’s an animal down here….I think it’s a ‘peke-a-poo’.

Me (groggily): A peke-a-poo?

Mrs. M: Well, I think it is…it’s black and white and I think it’s stuck in my gate.

Me: A peke-a-poo?

So, I’m thinking now that I’m going to go down the road to find either a dog stuck in her fence, or, more likely my crested Cayuga duck who is now black and white and can escape our fence. Something I really would rather not do at 7:45 in the morning.

I walked up the road in the freezing cold. I stood in front of her metal entrance gate, which isn’t all that big, searching for the peke-a-poo/duck. I felt pretty stupid standing there because I couldn’t see a thing besides a black metal gate.

Then I looked up.

A very familiar puff of white and black met my eyes.

Wayward had flown the coop yet again, and here she was roosting on top of my neighbor’s gate. I really thought she’d learned her lesson after her sister’s fatal road crossing incident, but obviously I was mistaken.

Most annoying was the fact that she jumped out of my hands and began to run (in circles, of course) around me and I couldn’t catch her. Here I am in the icy morning, chasing a chicken, and no more than 15 feet from a deadly road. I haven’t had my coffee and I’m pretty perturbed that I am having to chase down a mentally challenged bird. Otherwise, it MIGHT have been funny.

Finally, after about 5 minutes of playing ‘Chase the Chicken’ (NOT a fun game, by the way), I was able to snatch her up. You would have thought that she had no idea who I was. You know…the human that feeds her twice a day, every day, for the past year. The human that has rescued her from practically committing suicide no less than 4 times.

I wonder if there’s any support group for owners of challenged chickens?

*edited to read “ARCtic. Good grief.*

The Amazing Race

Every day, at our house, a most amazing race takes place. It is not only a battle of speed, but that of stealth and wits. It is a competition of the minds. We call it……..DUM DUM DUM!

Bathroom: Man Vs. Cat

Some animals sense foreboding danger, such as tornadoes or earthquakes. Our cat senses your need to ‘go potty’ (more specifically, #2), and his response is to beat you to his litter box so that he may do his ‘thing’ first, while you must suffer the imminent cat poo fumes he produces.

Let me elaborate on the situation. The cat box is in our bathroom, approximately 2 feet from our potty. Therefore, should he beat you to the punch, you are forced to suffer by inhaling cat fumes, if you will.

At first, we thought it was a fluke. Then, we thought his ‘gift’ was sort of funny. Now, it is nothing short of irritating when you have to try and sneak into the bathroom to do your ‘business’ in peace (and cat fume-free air). I’d like to say that we outsmart the cat, but I’d be lying to you. Oh, sure, we TRY to slip into the ‘loo on the sly, but I kid you not, by the time you nonchalantly place a foot outside of the bathroom door, there is a big, furry blur of orange dashing between your feet, and he takes a four foot flying leap into the litter box. Before you can say, “Crap!”, he has already assumed the position, and is doing just that. What makes this even more interesting is that Jason has the most sensitive sense of smell out of everyone that I know. So, there is no way that he and Garfield can possibly occupy the same bathroom while performing the same action, without Jason gagging and possibly losing consciousness. Now you can see why the bid to get to the bathroom first is so desperate. And THEN, as if to rub it in, the cat spends the next ten minutes covering his little treasure. Oh sure, he could cover it in three swipes, but he loves to torture people who have a desperate need to use the facilities. Never mind that if we happen to not be present during his bathroom break he rarely covers it at all.

So, the other day I was washing dishes when Jason announced “he’d be out in a minute”. Big mistake. Before he could shut the bathroom door, Jason grabbed my arm and said, “Just look at this!”. I peered into the bathroom, and there was Garfield in PC (pooping cat) position, with his eyes half shut. He looked up at me as if to say, “What?”. No one can perform that task as non-chalantly as a cat. In fact, he looked as though he needed some reading glasses and a newspaper.

Anyway, until next time, we’ll be working on beating the cat. So far: Cat: 421, Man: 2

All good things…

…as they say, must come to an end.

I have never written a chicken obituary/memorial before, but I figured that I owe one to this particular bird. The other day, as we were coming home, Jason spotted a familiar chicken that we all know and love….in the middle of the road. Quite flat, actually. I am glad I did not see it.

It was not THE Wayward Jones, but rather her sister, who apparently, even though she was warned of the dangers of hitchhiking and living loosely, still ventured too close to the road. I COULD mention the age-old joke here…but out of respect, I won’t theorize why the chicken crossed the road. Actually, now I suppose we’ll never know. Anyway, Ms. Jones was interred September 17th, 2010. Casseroles, chicken scratch, and donations to P.A.R.C. (Persons Against Runaway Chickens) will be accepted.

In other news, it is finally cooling down enough that I have made progress around the farm. Tonight, we have been working on adding a top to the chicken yard. A couple of weeks ago, I found the headless body of one of my barred Rock hens, which is indicative of a raccoon murder. Let me say here that I do not like raccoons. Sure, they may look all cute and fuzzy, what with their little people-like hands, thick fluffy coat, and ringed tail. But behind their mask lies a cold-blooded serial killer. Let’s not mince words here. I won’t go into detail about what I would like to do to the ‘coon, lest you think I am just a cruel person. So, to avoid further bloodshed, particularly for the ‘coon, we are putting a ‘lid’ on the outdoor run out of wire.

I have been lazy in my garden. I haven’t pulled weeds in weeks and haven’t really cared to. Jason made the comment the other day, “Nice bed of Bermuda you’re growing here.” I couldn’t argue. If I were TRYING to grow Bermuda, it couldn’t have looked much better than the thick, jungle carpet that has now dominated my old lettuce patch. BUT, now is the time to plant, so I hope to take new pics and show you what will be in store for winter. I am planning on having a really kick-butt winter garden this year, mainly by really utilizing row covers and my chenilles.

In farmhouse news, it’s really nothing new. Please, please, please, if you do repairs on your house, have them (or do them) professionally. And for crying out loud, please don’t use the cheapest parts you can buy. Our poor heat pump/blower was apparently brought over on the Ark, and probably the same model used by the ancient Egyptians. Ok, maybe those time periods don’t coincide. Whatever, you get the picture. Our kitchen faucet is leaky, the kitchen sink is made out of white plastic (what masochist picked THAT out???) and the supposedly new septic tank is overflowing. Not complaining, just venting. Anyhoo, it boils down to I am about to have to spend a good chunk o’ change to have a new heatpump installed, so that we don’t freeze to death this year. I mean, last year, our house was at 58 degrees. I’m sorry, but I don’t care to live in a meat locker. Thank the Good Lord for all my quilts. I looked like some sort of strange chrysalis all winter last year, wrapped in about 14 quilts, along with thermal underwear, a full set of clothes and 2 layers of socks. I didn’t go anywhere without my throng of quilts. THIS YEAR (I’m pulling a total Scarlett O’Hara here), with God as my witness, I will not freeze again! We are going to insulate the house. I hope they blow 5 feet of insulation in the attic. I want so much insulation, it is scraping the rafters. I want so much that it is spilling out of every vent and pore of this house. I can’t say enough about good insulation.

I think I will end my post here. Hopefully, next go ’round I will have some sort of interesting pictures for you all.

Super Fantastic Cat Alarm 2

If you haven’t read my post: Super Fantastic Cat Alarm, well, go there first.

If you have, here is a picture of my little alarm cat, Garfield. Also known as Garf, Garfunkel, The Orange Marauder, and now, El Garfo (my kids made that up). This is a cat who has adopted my husband as his own kind and incessantly circles his ankles, crying for food. Doesn’t matter if there’s food in the dish or not, he wants FRESH food, for crying out loud. He also torments my husband in the bathroom, where my poor hubby is just trying to enjoy his ‘morning constitutional’ and Garfield is consistently scratching the door until he is let in. He also follows him into the bathroom for shower time, where he will patiently wait until Jason is out of the shower, whereupon he cries until Jason gives in and gives him more food. He also doesn’t like Jason typing on his laptop, and will jump into his lap and try to sabotage anything Jason is doing.

But, with a face like that, how could you get mad? Well, you really can’t. No matter how much you want to get mad, you just can’t get upset looking at a squooshy little face and tiny ears. Please excuse his ‘cat boogers’ in his nose…I guess it’s time for ‘mommy’ to wash the cat’s face.

Mama Hen

So here is the result of letting my crazy Cochin hen set her own eggs. As you can see, the results went really well! 3 out of 4 eggs hatched. The ‘dad’ is a Silkie and the ‘bio mom’ is ???, though I think that for the 2 little white hens it is a bantam Cochin mother. These pics are from June, but now, the little guys are all feathered out and interestingly enough, they all have ‘ear muffs’, and a mohawk. I’ll have to grab some new pics soon. Another interesting thing is that while my brooder raised chicks all contracted coccidia, these guys did not. So there ya’ go…probably better to let Mother Nature ‘do her thing’ rather than depend on an incubator.

Another funny thing is that this hen, I thought for sure, would be dead about a year ago. We rescued her from a really bad situation. Her butt was LITERALLY ripped off…she is missing a lot of her tail. I am sure a dog got a good hold of her at some point. Anyway, when I first got her, she was so thin and ugly, I gave the poor thing a bath. She was absolutely filthy, and had huge gaps in her skin. I have no idea how long she had suffered along with that, but after her bath, she did nothing but get better. So, as you can see, she made it another year and did a great job raising these babies for me.

If you have never been around a mother hen and chicks, it is so neat to watch them interact. You can really see in the first few photos she is teaching them to peck the ground. The chicks are only a few days old in these pics. She makes a very soft clucking sound over and over and the chicks immediately stop what they’re doing and do whatever mom is doing. I wonder…would my kids respond to clucking???

The Wayward Sisters

It’s been a hot summer. I have fallen into my summer routine of doing outdoor chores either before 11am, or after the sun has fallen past the treeline. You won’t catch me out much during mid-day, unless it is in 100% shade. The heat has a way of turning us crazy. Not just humans, but apparently it works on chickens, too.

Last week, Jason completed fencing in our chicken coop and orchard. I admittedly did not help much…I am just not a ‘work in the heat’ person. I tend to forget what I’m doing, wander off, and end up in the house somehow. This is why I can somewhat sympathize with the Wayward sisters. If you are not familiar with Wayward Jones, my ever-lost chicken, you’ll have to read my post called “Where’s Wayward” first. Now you can continue.

I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but Wayward has a sister who looks almost identical, except she has more white feathering on her head, causing her to look EVEN MORE like a strange black and white version of Big Bird, or perhaps even a chicken lollipop. Anyway, the fact is, is that they are the most mindless little birds…I’m not sure now if it’s intentional or unintentional or what. About a week or so ago, before the fence was up, we were still having to catch some of the chickens nightly and put them up for the night. I have 2 sets of chickens that I must pay special attention to: The Dovies, which are a pair of tiny, dove-sized Old English Bantam hens who enjoy scaling trees at dusk and laughing at us attempting to retrieve them…and then, of course, the Wayward Sisters, who could get lost in a paper sack.

So, one day at dusk, I couldn’t find the Sisters. Oh, of course, they had been around earlier, but now were nowhere to be seen. A little bit of panic always sets in when I can’t find the Sisters, because there is no telling where they could be. Finally, I decided to take the golf cart and go check by the road. I pulled the cart out of our gate. There, at the VERY tip-top of the hill no more than about 18 inches off the (very dangerous) road, I saw a familiar lollipop-looking head.

“WAYWARD!”, I screamed. The lollipop stood straight up and stiffened. “WAYYYYYYWARD!”

I flew through the ditch as fast as the cart would go. The lollipop-headed chicken ran towards me. ‘Chariots of Fire’ was playing (I think). Golf cart thundering down the side of the road, chicken running with wings outstretched….you get the picture.

Anyway, as it turned out, it was THE Wayward Jones, but I still couldn’t find her sister. Fortunately, her sister also responds to the name ‘Wayward’, so I was still screaming that, driving up and down the road, holding a black and white chicken. It was probably pretty funny for the passersby.

I finally gave up and decided that I was just going to have to leave it up to chance. Either she would be around in the morning, or she wouldn’t. Well, I woke up the next morning and she wasn’t. We had to leave later in the day to run errands, and as we pulled out of the gate, Jason said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”. There was Wayward Sister #2, sitting about a foot off of the road. I could have sworn I saw a tiny knapsack and a sign saying, “Mexico or Bust”, but maybe it was just the heat playing tricks on my brain. Once again, ‘Chariots of Fire’. She excitedly ran in circles (God bless those chickens, they just can’t get it right), and hopped in my arms.

So NOW I have learned that the Sisters are not to be let out of the chicken yard. Unless I want them to end up being little black and white spots on the road, which I do NOT. After all, we have made it all this way, all these months together of finding them in the pasture, trees, kitchen windows, toy dump trucks, and by the road. I’m not giving up now.