Free range chickens...

We let the chickens out of their coop this afternoon, for about an hour or so. We stayed in the yard with them, and just watched their progress as they walked out of the open gate of the coop and ventured into their great unknown. They seemed quite happy with the yard right around The Coopacabana and the guest cottage, and didn't venture as far as I thought they would. But today was just their first outing... I'm sure they'll get braver with each little journey.

The leader of the pack is definitely Audrey, my husband's brown/black/red hen with the posture of a supermodel. Next in the pecking order is Dolly, my red hen. In an art museum, it would be this type of hen (a Rhode Island Red) in the oil painting of a farm-yard.

The two Guinea hens have stayed together since my husband went back to the chicken farm to get the second Guinea hen to keep the first one company. (We didn't know at first that they needed to be in pairs.) The second one is a bit smaller than the larger gray one, and this "new" one has lots of white polka-dots..... my husband named her Dottie. The Guinea hens coo and sing to one another and their sounds are very pretty.

My three hens are living up to their namesakes..... Dolly is the no-nonsense red hen who is continuously arranging and re-arranging the hay in the nesting boxes. So far, she has gifted us with two beautiful brown eggs. Jaye is the over-the-top black/white feathered hen, who is constantly preening and fluffing up her feathers... she has given us one egg so far. And Edie, the sleek black hen, does what she pleases and doesn't always follow the six others. When we put the hens back into the coop this afternoon, it was Edie who broke away from the rest and tried to hide under the bushes.

Even though the Audrey hen is Queen of the Coopacabana, she hasn't given us an egg yet. But she has let my husband pet her, and she eats out of his hand all the time. Henny Penny, the brown hen with the leopard spots, seems to follow either Dolly or Audrey around the coop, and all three of them stayed pretty close together when they were out in the yard.

While the chickens were discovering the backyard and scratching the grass for worms, my husband hosed-down the concrete floor of the coop. Nice and clean after that good washing, and now that we're letting the chickens out every day, the coop won't be quite so messy. The backyard grass, on the other hand.... we'll just have to watch where we're walking.

I had heavy baskets on the floor of the coop and the hens would walk in and out of them, and rest in them instead of flying up to the roosting bar. When we let the chickens into the yard, I put two of the baskets in the yard and left just one in the coop. I figured the two baskets in the yard would be nice little egg-laying spots for them if they had the urge when they were out of the coop. But when we got the hens back into the coop, three of them were fighting each other for the one basket that I had left inside the coop. It's mine! No!! It's mine!! I was here first!!

So back I went into the yard, and gathered up the two baskets that I left under the bushes near the courtyard. Back into the coop I went, and put those baskets right where they were in the first place. I guess the hens liked those baskets right where they were.... so I will leave them in the coop and look for more heavy baskets at the resale shop, and I'll keep those in the yard for them. (Picky... picky....)


The bug-guy was here again today.... did the second treatment underneath the house and up in the third floor attic. We should be, please heaven, scorpion-free. Please. Please. I am running on empty here, with three nights of very little sleep. I was downstairs in the TV room sewing puffs for the quilted pillows and I fell asleep while "Dancing With the Stars" was on. I woke up with the needle still poised to sew into the circle of fabric. I'm lucky one of the cats didn't jump into my lap and land on that needle, for goodness sake. (I woke up in time to see that Tom DeLay didn't get booted off that show. Give me a blessed break.)

I've already done the bug-check up here..... looking at all the ceilings, in all the corners, searching all the bedcovers with a flashlight. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. There might be a god after all.

Our neighbors J & J, down the road in their newly-built, solid-as-a-rock stone house, called to tell us that they found a scorpion in their master bedroom the other night. They have also had to fish out scorpions who drown in their pool every night. Now... the pool I can understand. The scorpions come out at night looking for food and water, they see the water in that pool, and they don't realize how deep and wide it is, and in they go. But the master bedroom of a just-completed brand-new house? And our house as well? With all the rooms in here, why do those damn things find the master bedroom?!

There must be a Scorpion Master Plan: we will scare-to-near-death all the women of this two-legged species... attack their senses in the rooms where they sleep... they will become walking zombies with brains like applesauce due to lack of rest... and then we can take over the world because when all those female brains turn to mush, the males of the species will not survive very long because they won't be able to find anything!

I truly need a good night's sleep.