All things feathered...

I'm finding out that I miss the chickens.  I don't miss the cleaning-up of the coop, but I miss seeing them walking around the yard.  I especially miss Scarlett, who would come to the back door and sit there waiting for me to bring her some vegetable scraps or bits of bread.... and then at the end of the day as the sun was setting, Scarlett would plop herself down by my feet so I could carry her Royal Hen-ness to the coop.

Scarlett was the last tragedy in the coop.... bitten by the snake because she wouldn't give up her egg. Even in chickens, the mother instinct sometimes rules over common sense.  If Scarlett had been smart enough to realize that she was sitting on a fake egg, would she have protected that egg till her last breath the way she did?  And even if it had been a real egg... without a rooster, the eggs from our hens were never destined to be baby chicks.

After giving our last two chickens to neighbor G, I told him not to tell me anything other than "Your chickens are living happily ever after."  I thought of going up there one day this week, to see if either PittyPat or Audrey would recognize me, but then what's the point of that.  I hope they're living happily.....

The barn swallows....... we must have four or five generations in nests around our porch now.  The baby birds fly out of the nest when they're ready for independence, but they don't fly off into the sunset.  They just seem to fly around the yard, getting used to the trees and the bushes and the water fountain out in the front yard...... and then they return to the back porch with endless daubs of mud to build their own home-tweet-home.  And then they lay eggs..... and they hatch....... and then fledge..... and another generation joins the party.

The cow birds....... that's what JS calls those white egret-y birds that are out in the fields, whether you have cows or not. (We don't.)  But we do have hay, which has recently been mowed down and is now being gathered up into huge bales. The cow birds are feasting on crickets and grasshoppers and beetles and heaven-only-knows-what-else that lives out there in the tall grass.  The cow birds (the country's equivalent of the coastal seagulls) fly into the middle of the pastures to capture as many insects as they can, then they fly over to the pond to get a drink of water and search for minnows. (Their own version of surf-and-turf, I guess.)

The parakeets...... we haven't seen so much as a feather, or heard so much as a chirp in weeks now. Definitely gone, gone, gone.  I'm hoping that Houdini and BlueBell are still together, making a nest somewhere and possibly laying eggs and hatching them.   I had visions of one or both of them finding their way back to the yard and perching in a tree, chirping to get my attention so they'd get back into the cage and back into the house. Not going to happen...... and even if they did come back, it would seem a bit cruel now to re-cage them after they've had a taste of the sky.  My parakeet days are over.... I've already put the large cage into the shop with a price tag on it. Ditto for the book on raising parakeets.

As for the squirrel who opened up their cage when they were out on the porch...... we tried to catch him, but he was smarter than we were.  Even a good smear of peanut butter didn't get that squirrel to get into that catch/release trap.  My husband would have relocated the squirrel over to the Lake, but it seems the squirrel likes ranch life better than waterfront living.

No more chickens, even though I miss them.  The cats have been enjoying the coop..... Sweet Pea climbs to the top of the ladder and looks out over the field............ Mickey sits on his little wicker table and seems perfectly content.  With all the cat furniture in there, you would never know it had ever been a chicken coop, until you look over at the nesting boxes....... which the cats now use for napping.  The cats are happy--- they have a screen porch, of sorts.

Life goes on, with or without fresh eggs.