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| And That's How He Earned His New Name: Houdini |
WE'VE BEEN LUCKY WITH RAIN IN BIRDLAND. The whole yard is
green and the cucurbit that sprouted volunteer where the old chicken coop was, has
become a lush patch with leaves the size of platters and big, trumpeting orange
flowers. It is vining out into the yard and green bulbous egg-sized fruits have
set on. Maybe it's pumpkin, maybe squash. I can't wait to see. I did plant a
pumpkin patch for my sister where the old compost pile was before we spread it
out in the vegetable and flowerbeds. I planted both pie pumpkins and big ones
for Jack-o-Lanterns. My sister wants to have a harvest festival in October, and
we have to plan ahead. These seedlings are just emerging from their hills.
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| The Whole Yard Is Green |
Last week I got an email from Mary in Bement who offered me
a rooster. Now, as much as I love chickens, I have turned down many generous
offers of roosters. A nicely balanced flock has one rooster for every dozen or
so hens. Too many roosters will fight with each other and exhaust the hens. We
already had 2, and everyone was getting along, but this one was a Lavender
Orpington. If you have never seen one, you should look it up. They are grey
with a rosy tint. Orpingtons are gentle by nature, and these are just lovely. I
agreed to try to integrate Mary's rooster into my flock. We put him in a cage
after she brought him over, just for the day. We would wait until after dark to
introduce him to the coop. Sometimes chickens will accept a new member in the
dark, and by morning forget that they were ever strangers. Well, the first
thing that happened is that he got out of the cage. Ellis walked out to the car
and saw the rooster in the crate by the garage. My youngest was going out on
the town. He started driving away, but saw the empty cage in his rear-view
mirror. He parked and came to tell me, and we were able to catch the rooster
and put him back. After the flock returned to the coop for the night I snuck
the new rooster into the coop. In the morning, I let everybody out but him,
hoping a day in the coop would teach him that this is his new home, or at least
that this is where he can find food and water. But by chicken-dark, he was gone
again. Again we didn't know how he escaped. That's how he earned his new name:
Houdini.
Integrating him into the flock didn't go well. With chickens
you are always going to have pecking order issues. Mean Mr. Mustard, our old,
one-eyed rooster is the big cheese, and he took issue with his new coop-mate,
chasing him away when Houdini went near a hen. Houdini lost most of his tail
feathers in the scuffle. To make matters worse, Ursula chased him, too. My dog
learned long ago not to chase chickens, but who was this new bird of a
different color and smell? Whenever Ursula saw Houdini, she would tear after
him. The poor guy took to hiding under the cedar tree. My best efforts to stop
the terror were fruitless. Finally I decided that Ursula wouldn't go outside
unless she was on a leash. I thought I could train her to leave Houdini alone
if I could immediately correct her. The problem was, Houdini was already so
terrorized that he would head for the hills every time he saw Ursula coming, so
we could never get close enough for me to correct the chasing behavior.
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| The Chicken Didn't Know This |
That day Michael came home with a new idea. At work my
husband had lamented about the chicken chasing behavior to a friend who had a
solution. It was simple, but so silly, I didn't see how it could work. His
friend had said, "Let Ursula smell the chicken's butt." The idea was
that Ursula was just trying to check out this new member of the Birdland
community by sniffing his butt. The chicken didn't know that, and would run
away, thus a chase would ensue, and the problem just kept getting worse.
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| Sniff in Beauty: Foster Peace: Blessed Be. |
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