In an effort to be more green and farmer-ish, we have been free ranging our chickens for the past few months. It was hard for me to let them out of the pen at first, but I did. They're free as the wind and loving life. None of my great fears have come to pass - until today anyway.....and to be honest, this is one fear I never even had before today.
We have this one chicken. There's always one, right? Well, she likes to climb in cars....and trucks....and vans. She sees a car door open and she beelines her way across the yard in hopes of scoring a goldfish from the floorboard in front of Riley's seat. Maybe if I was a free-ranged chicken living on a diet of yard bugs, I too would risk it all for the slimy discards of a four-year-old boy. Who knows?
Until today, this strange chicken behavior hasn't been a problem - annoying but not really a problem.
I was at my parent's, cooling off my little people in the pool, when Dean called from Highway 78 in Stone Mountain. We're chit-chatting away about the day when Dean pauses and says, "I think I saw a chicken in my rear view mirror." That's odd. He's two hours from home, out in the big city. As the truck rolled to a stop in traffic, our conversation went something like this:
Dean (with a calm voice): "Brownie is in the back of the truck. She's roosting up on the side of the truck right now, flapping her wings like she's going to fly off."
Brownie is our goldfish thief, the automobile invader and apparently now a hitchhiker.
Me (with a not-so-calm voice): "Stop the truck and catch her, Dean!"
"What am I going to do with her once I catch her", questioned my love.
"Put her in the cab, Dean!"
"I'm not putting a chicken in the cab of my truck!" (That doesn't sound like a very farmer-ish thing to say, my love).
So....my love drove to my parent's house with a chicken riding shotgun in the cab of his truck, because....well, that's just the kind of guy he is!
When he got to my mom and dad's he popped that sweet chicken into the back yard to feast on the fare there, thinking we could just pick her up when it came time to go home. The thing is, we forgot about the whole roosting thing. It got dark. She roosted. We couldn't find her. We had to go.
There were chicken sighting for days in their neighborhood before my daddy caught her and caged her. Dean made a special trip to bring her home to us because he's just that kind of guy.
Alls well that ends well, I suppose. We'll get this farming thing right, eventually!
We have this one chicken. There's always one, right? Well, she likes to climb in cars....and trucks....and vans. She sees a car door open and she beelines her way across the yard in hopes of scoring a goldfish from the floorboard in front of Riley's seat. Maybe if I was a free-ranged chicken living on a diet of yard bugs, I too would risk it all for the slimy discards of a four-year-old boy. Who knows?
Until today, this strange chicken behavior hasn't been a problem - annoying but not really a problem.
I was at my parent's, cooling off my little people in the pool, when Dean called from Highway 78 in Stone Mountain. We're chit-chatting away about the day when Dean pauses and says, "I think I saw a chicken in my rear view mirror." That's odd. He's two hours from home, out in the big city. As the truck rolled to a stop in traffic, our conversation went something like this:
Dean (with a calm voice): "Brownie is in the back of the truck. She's roosting up on the side of the truck right now, flapping her wings like she's going to fly off."
Brownie is our goldfish thief, the automobile invader and apparently now a hitchhiker.
Me (with a not-so-calm voice): "Stop the truck and catch her, Dean!"
"What am I going to do with her once I catch her", questioned my love.
"Put her in the cab, Dean!"
"I'm not putting a chicken in the cab of my truck!" (That doesn't sound like a very farmer-ish thing to say, my love).
So....my love drove to my parent's house with a chicken riding shotgun in the cab of his truck, because....well, that's just the kind of guy he is!
(Notice the chewed up rear view mirror. A big thank you goes out to Jethro, our bloodhound, for personalizing the truck!)
There were chicken sighting for days in their neighborhood before my daddy caught her and caged her. Dean made a special trip to bring her home to us because he's just that kind of guy.
Alls well that ends well, I suppose. We'll get this farming thing right, eventually!
