Hisnabiddies!

That’s what my wife, Cecily, calls them—they’re her Hisnabiddies.  Don’t ask me where she got the name….none of us in this family can figure out where Cecily’s monikers come from:  Nuticeemotees, Mr. Muckster, HeesieMeese, Mr. Poonie, they all come from some fantasy place where all the personalities generate their own names….but I digress!

What’s a Hisnabiddie?

We now have two of them:  Hercules and Betty.  They arrived rather unceremoniously in the back of Cracker’s pickup truck.  Hercules is a fairly large Dominique rooster with black and white feathers, a giant comb and an unrelenting voice that starts at about 6am and continues for about an hour and a half until he wears himself out!  He must have a lot on his mind.  Betty is a Rhode Island Red hen about half the size and without the inflated ego of Hercules.  However Betty is no shrinking violet either!

When Cecily discovered the erstwhile ramshackle coop in the back yard when we first saw the property, it has been non-stop as far as planning to fix it and bring chickens into our lives.  I, frankly, was ambivalent about the whole thing.  As the person who empties the cat litter and used to scoop the dog poop off the lawn every day, I was not about to take on what I thought would be the nastiness of caring for birds that I was sure would soil everything…..have you ever been to a chicken farm??

It has been 2 ½ years since we moved in, and Cecily has been pining for chickens literally every day.  Then we met up with Cracker.  Cracker, alias William L., is a gentle 60-year old handyman who grew up in rural Florida and was a real ‘Chicken Man’.  He knows more about raising chickens than I could have forgotten in my time on earth!  So suddenly he was Cecily’s guru about chickens AND he could also fix the coop! Joy of joys!

After Cracker reconstructed the broken down chicken coop(at a cost that was more than I expected, but whatever) he said he could get us some actual chickens, so we set about waiting for the ‘blessed event arrival’.  We waited about two weeks during which my wife was strangely patient—I would have thought she would be calling Cracker every day looking for the birds!

All of a sudden the phone rings last Monday morning and Cracker says he has two birds that someone just left off at his house, and he can’t keep them, so do we want them? 

Do I have to tell you the answer Cecily gave him?

A few hours later, Cracker drives up and there are Hercules and Betty in a cage about the size of an average wire dog crate.  And before you can say Chicken Fricassee, those birds are making themselves at home in their new ‘Chez Fowl Chateau’.  Hercules is strutting around “cockel-doodle doing”, and Betty is pecking at the dirt looking for bugs or whatever.  Cracker set up our new coop with straw, seeds and water, and bingo, we were in chicken nirvana!  

I have to admit that Hercules was impressive looking with big feet that I would not want to tangle with, and an attitude that said, “I am the king of this coop even though I just got here.”

So now we are waiting for the inevitable arrival of the eggs, which was the original justification for doing all this.  All I have heard for the past two years is that the flavor of freshly laid eggs makes it all worth it.  Well, still waiting…….

Apparently hens do not start blessing us with new ‘arrivals’ until they get comfortable with their surrounding.  And with only one hen right now, the prospect of a 3-egg omelet is still far into my future.

Betty is not shy.  She eats out of our hands and is obsessed with food.  She is also an intrepid explorer, since whenever we go in the coop, she is immediately trying to get out the door to see what is going on in the yard.

We’ve been watching them from the house and have witnessed that they have discovered a diversion:  They both climb to the top of the slanted roof on the enclosure that provides them shade.

They like it up there because apparently it offers them a wider view of their world.  Then, they seem to love sliding down the roof and fluttering to the ground when they hit the edge of the roof.  They do this over and over again as entertainment.  Who knew that chickens seek fun?

Tucker, my daughter’s dog who lives with us while Caitlin is traveling the world, is trying to understand these interlopers.  He is surprisingly quiet as he stands outside the coop and watches them through the fence.  The birds are ambivalent about him.

Yesterday, Cecily was preparing food and water in the shed next door to the coop, and when she came out there was Tucker actually inside the coop un-chaperoned!  He was standing absolutely still looking at Hercules. I think he was wondering if he should be scared or not.  There was this sort of Mexican standoff between him and Hercules, while Betty was still pecking the dirt for bugs and seed.  Cecily walked into the coop and invited Tucker to leave, which he did immediately and I think with great relief!  We’ll see how that relationship unfolds!

Meanwhile we are seeking additional pullet hens so that we can have enough eggs for an omelette, or at least some scrambled eggs eventually.

I must admit they are entertaining, and so far not too much work.  I keep checking the little boxes with straw to see if Betty might have left a surprise, but so far, nada!

Cracker said that if Hercules becomes too noisy or a nuisance, we can always have him for dinner----unghhh, not sure about that now that I know him as a ‘Hisnabiddy!’ 

I don’t think Hisnabiddies are edible as dinner!