Friends Erik and Pat Fagerland came over late yesterday afternoon – Erik to clean out our chicken coop and Pat ‘along for the ride.’ I think it’s the third voluntary coop cleanout that Erik’s done since Nyel has been listed in the crippled column. To say we are in his debt is not even close.
Pat and I were just beginning our catch-up visiting when Erik was back at the house telling Pat there was a crow trapped in the chicken run. Pat’s artwork has featured crows for years and Erik knew she’d be out there in a flash with her camera. I was right behind her.
The crow, small enough that we thought he might be a juvenile (and, therefore, not yet worldly-wise), had apparently flown into the run when the gate was wide open. Nyel had not thought to prop it open when he made the food and water delivery in the early a.m. Then came the wind with predictable results: crow in; chickens out.
Though I was only two steps behind, Pat was already snapping photos by the time I approached. I chose to go inside the run with the intruder, knowing that pictures taken through that chicken wire are not always optimum. The crow considered me closely, did a few fly-bys and then settled down to pose this way and that on the chicken’s outdoor roost.
He (or she) continued to cooperate with Pat after she and I exchanged places but when the photographic session was over and Erik opened the gate wide, there was no hesitation on the crow’s part. He was out of there. We all wondered if he had learned his lesson or if tempting bits of overlooked chicken feed would lure him in again sometime.
Meanwhile, the girls had gathered under a nearby rhododendron to watch the proceedings. No telling how long they had been closed out – it had been windy all day long. There was a single egg in one of the nest boxes but no way of telling if it had been laid early in the morning or later in the afternoon. Perhaps, as sometimes happens, it was the only one for the day. Or, perhaps, there were one or two others placed strategically in the garden when the nest boxes couldn’t be accessed.
We’ll probably never know, just as we’ll probably never know if that crow is a particular friend of the girls and visits often. Somehow, I suspect that it was not his first foray into our chicken run… and he didn’t seem traumatized enough to make it his last.
I seem to be confused these days, but in a good way. My expectations don’t match the calendar nor do my hours match the clock. Part of that is due to the weather, part is due to the earlier-than-used-to-be Daylight Savings Time, and part is due to the calendar.
In fact, Easter Sunday on March 31st was so beautiful that the neighbors had an egg hunt in the church yard for their grandchildren. A little later we enjoyed a mid-day dinner al fresco at another neighbor’s! I think those were firsts in Oysterville, at least in my memory.
We forgot about the ‘early to bed’ part entirely last night. In fact we totally spaced the necessity of changing the clocks, but Nyel’s biological chronometer kicked in at the new 5:00 a.m. anyway. Actually, his cell phone said 5:15 but our old-fashioned, battery-operated alarm clock hadn’t rung. “It’s only 4:15,” said I. And then reality set in.
During World War II, it became obligatory for the whole country as a way to save wartime resources and, for the last three years of the war, Daylight Saving Time was actually observed all year long. We seem to be headed in that direction once again; since 2007 the time period for Daylight Saving has been increased from seven to eight months.
Our girls are huge, or so they look to me when I tuck them in each night just before sunset. Of course, I’m looking at them from what some might call an unflattering perspective. They are on their perch, settling in for the night and I am seeing their feathery behinds. Huge!
In most circumstances, I’d be the first to say that there is no way to measure friendship. And why would you want to, anyway? Like all the best things of life – the fleeting sunrise, the smell of honeysuckle, the starry-eyed feeling of first love – there is no cause to quantify. It is what it is.
Meanwhile, the other half of the team, beautiful Pat, was sautéing onions and mushrooms, unpacking a green salad and a potato salad (her grandmother’s recipe), and providing cheese-and-cracker snacks for starters. I had only to set the table and find a serving spoon or two. Talk about being spoiled!
Even though I’m fairly certain that our girls are non-readers and not even that much interested in the pictures, I have no intention of letting them get an accidental look at our newly acquired reading matter. It’s a book that will not leave the confines of the house. In fact, it will probably live in the kitchen, a safe and suitable distance from our hens.
“You have the most beautiful skin, pale and not one feather. I want to crisp every single inch of it.”
Our Oysterville world was white with frost yesterday morning when I went out to feed the chickens. They slipped and slid a little as they waddled down the ramp from their coop toward their food and they waited impatiently while I added warm water to melt the ice in their ‘water’ container. The girls aren’t crazy about cold weather, despite their fluffy, down-lined dresses.
Sure enough. On the window sill was a tiny black bird with a long, pointy bill. When I came into the room she hopped off the sill and down onto the shelf and looked at me in a very friendly way.
Until a few days ago, I have been complaining fairly regularly about the recalcitrant ways of our two Ameracauna hens. Though their same-age-coop-mates, two Wyandottes, have been presenting us with lovely brown eggs since last September, no blue Ameriacauna eggs have been in evidence.
Even on these darkest days of winter, we are blessed with one or two eggs a day. They are brown eggs and we have assumed that they are being produced by our two Silver Laced Wyandotte hens (as all the literature says.) We had given up on the two Ameracaunas. Maybe in the spring, we thought, we would start finding their blue eggs in the nest boxes.
I immediately apologized to those two Ameracaunas for the occasional encouragement (read ‘chiding’) I’ve doled out to them concerning their lazy laying habits. Who knows how many of the brown eggs we’ve been enjoying came from them? I guess it’s not their fault that they are colorblind. Or whatever you call a hen who lays brown eggs instead of blue.
When Farmer Nyel’s new bionic knee went wonky a few weeks ago, it seemed expedient to take on some of his two-legged duties that heretofore I had given but little thought to – duties, that is, with regard to the girls. Four fat hens don’t really require much on a day-in-day-out basis, but they do like their routines and I am happy to accommodate them,