Birthday Treat!

When I said I’d be celebrating my birthday for a year, I had no idea what form the partying would take. Birdseed! That’s what! At least that’s how it has begun.

Last night I was the guest of honor at a Birthday Dinner and one of the participants surprised me with a bag of wild birdseed – “so your girls will stay home!” he announced.  (I should point out that said gift-giver is a reader of my blogs and has taken note of my comments about the current bad habits of our resident chickens.)

Thus it is that today I’ll be scattering a little birdseed out in the yard about mid-morning. I remember that Pooh Bear described his need for a little smackerel of something as “feeling eleven o’clockish.” For our chickens, though, snack time is all day long. After all, that’s what free-ranging is all about.

But lately, about morning coffee break time, they head under the fence, across the street, through the Driscoll’s yard and over to Wachsmuths’ place. Somehow, they’ve gotten wind of the fact that Carol feeds the birds each morning and, apparently, the girls feel obligated to go over and do any necessary cleanup.

Heading on Out!

I’m not completely convinced that they actually make the daily excursion with birdseed as their main focus. I suspect that they could be simply paying a neighborly social call. They like Carol and Tucker. They know them well as the folks who come to wake them up and tuck them in whenever we are away. And I think that by careful observation they have figured out where these nice chicken-sitters come from. The wild bird seed may be just a bonus.

Homeward Bound

We’ll see. Now that I have a supply right here at the house, will they continue to make their daily excursions? Is it one of those ‘how’re you going to keep them down on the farm,’ things? As long as Tucker and Carol don’t mind the girls coming to call, and as long as those chickens look both ways as they cross the road, it’s all good. Although we are considering one of those Chicken Crossing signs.