There's a new rooster in town...

....and he lives on one of the properties along our road. We can hear him crowing (and probably strutting his stuff) every morning. Truly a country sound coming from that rooster. So much nicer than the howling of the night-time coyotes.

Hearing the rooster gets me to missing our chickens, but I just don't want to adopt any more hens, thank you.  For our first batch of hens, I named each of them after my aunts. Big mistake. The first one to die was Edie, because her curiosity got the best of her and she drowned in the fountain in the front courtyard. I had to explain that calamity to my Aunt Dolly, and she was not happy.  Actually, my Aunt Dolly is under the impression that the hen named after her is still alive and gifting us with eggs every morning. I didn't have the heart to tell Aunt Dolly that her namesake was killed by a snake nearly four years ago.

After the first flock of hens met their chicken-maker, we got another half dozen and I named those after characters in "Gone With the Wind."  After a while, they also got taken by foxes, hawks, and heaven only knows what else, with Scarlett being the last survivor until a snake got her also. Life is not easy in the world of chickens, unless you can keep them completely fenced-in all the time, and even then, a snake can get in if he is very determined. (Refer to Scarlett.)

So now the chicken coop is a screened-in porch for Mickey Kitty..... he can get into the coop from his sleeping spot inside the garage. We keep him in the garage at night, hopefully safe from predators. Mickey loves the coop, and I don't think he would be happy to share his spot with chickens. Actually, I doubt very much that a flock of hens would want to be sharing space with Mickey either.