Chickens...The Great Escape!
The girls have always been skittish, never approached the door of the run and only Lily ever lets me catch her so…..it was quite a shock when Lacy, the barred rock dashed out the door and headed for freedom the other day!
Now, you have to understand, I’m dressed for the office, late, but running out to give the girls their meal worm treats anyway, so this is NOT a good time for fooling around! She dashed across the lawn with a glance back that I swear said with attitude, “catch me if you can”! Quickly shutting the door to the run so we didn’t have a total mutiny, I paused and thought, “I taught high school boys for Heaven sake, I can outsmart one little chicken…I hope…and get to work on time…”
I began to feed a few more worms to the others and added a few lettuce leaves…now she was noticing and slowly waking our way. As the other two clucked happily at the added treats Lacy slowly made her way around the back of the run trying to peck the wire enclosure to get the her buddy’s treats. Clearly, she was disturbed at the extra food they scored that she had not! Stepping into the run I held out a handful of worms (I still hate holding crunchy worms) and began to walk slowly along the 9 foot run around to the door, which I had left open, hoping the others wouldn’t take off in the meantime.
They’re clucking excitedly at the extra treats, she is silently giving me the evil eye and reluctantly following the handful of worms. Of course, I’m not looking where I’m going, so my boots, (the office kind, not the chicken coop cleaning kind) are getting, well, not office appropriate! As we approached the door she cocked her head and glared at me as only a chicken can with one eye to the ground and one to the sky, as if to say, “if you get out of the way, I’m trying to go home”! In she went to the obvious delight of her friends who gathered around her…(Now all three are looking at me like, “how could you let this happen)!
Happy to have outsmarted an 8 month old chicken I headed off to work blissfully unaware I had pine shavings running down my leg and chicken poop on my boots. Luckily I noticed while stepping out of the car in the office parking lot where I’m sure the gardeners blowing leaves in the parking lot wondered
if they should turn the thing on me and help with the pine shaving problem….And on top of all that, in all the excitement I left my nice fresh coffee sitting on the kitchen counter! Some days it doesn’t pay to get up!
But, things are back to normal and they looked so cute competing for grapes this morning, I love them all again!
Have a Merry Monday! Only 9 more days till Christmas!