Tales of the Chick-Inn or “Trying to Reason with a Chicken is a Fool’s Errand!

I know you all have been breathlessly awaiting the next episode in the continuing saga of Hercules and his flock.  Well, today was the day when I was outwitted by a chicken, a rather embarrassing admission I must admit.

We had settled into a comfortable routine with our flock of 8 hens and Hercules.  Cecily had assumed the responsibility for their care and I was happy it wasn’t me that had to do the chores.  She has been feeding them and filling their water supply and awarding them with treats like a solid block of what looked like a giant granola bar, until you looked closely and saw that one of its main ingredients were those mealy worms that they seem to be wild for.

I was content to witness her elation with each egg that Betty laid and was just as happy to eat them once I got past the notion of where they actually came from.  

I did my part by constructing a sink with water supply in the little barn adjacent to the 

coop and figuring out how to secure a big umbrella over the coop to give the flock some shade during the heat of the day.  

I went to the store and bought all the hooks and hardware to secure the barn and keep the feed buckets from spilling all over the coop.  So it has been a shared responsibility in that regard.

I was not really prepared for Cecily’s departure on Friday to visit a friend in Charleston, SC, when I suddenly realized that I was going to have to greet the birds every morning and change the water and add the feed, etc.  How bad could it be, I rationalized? 

Cecily gave me all the instructions on how to let them out of the coop in the morning and then to get them back in the coop in the evening by enticing them with handfuls of those mildly icky worms.  I figured it was a snap, since she had been doing it without much trouble. 

Wrong!

It’s about 6:15pm and I thought it was time to get the birds back in the coop since they had been roaming the yard all day, and I wanted to go inside to fix myself a martini and unwind.  Well, the ‘girls’ and Hercules all saw me heading to the coop and started running towards me.  I got a handful of the mealy worms, repressed my gag reflex, and entered the coop to entice them to come in and get a treat.  All but one of the ‘lawyers’ decided to take me up on my offering.

A digression:  We have been searching for names for the 7 new hens we got several weeks ago.  5 of them are clearly from the same hatchling group, and two were a bit younger.  We named the two young hens ‘the twins’—Thelma and Louise.  The five older hens were a bit more challenging.  The only grouping of 5 names I could think of was from a local law firm that has been advertising on the local television and radio stations for the past 25 years with the same obnoxiously catchy tune for their name: Goldstein, Buckley, Cechman, Rice and Purtz.  So with some resistance from Cecily, I boldly started calling them by their names: Goldstein, Buckley, Cechman, Rice and Purtz! (Not that I could tell who was who!) I could even sing their song!  Anyway, now I refer to them as the ‘lawyers’.

So, one of the ‘lawyers’ (I am certain it was Purtz!) absolutely refused to come into the coop.  Hercules and Betty were no help, and they wouldn’t come in either.  Fast Forward 45 minutes and we are still at the same impasse, even though I have been cajoling, chasing, yelling and yes, trying to even reason with them!  What a fool I am!  You absolutely cannot reason with a chicken!  I felt like an abject failure as a herdsman!

I got so fed up with them I decided to go in the house and drink anyway!  I called Cecily to let her know that as far as I was concerned, the wild animals could eat them tonight because I was finished chasing then around the yard like a madman.

She howled with laughter and managed to calm me down.  She told me to just leave the door to the coop open and when the sun goes down they will all go in there instinctively.  Then, sneak up on the coop so they can’t see you and close the door.  I was skeptical, but clearly had nothing to lose, so I followed her instructions and went back into the house.

90 minute later after it was almost dark, and I had mellowed out from my martini, I looked out at the coop and could not see even one chicken in there.  With panic in my heart, I set out to take a closer look…….I went into the coop with my flashlight and camera, and when I looked up into the sheltered area in the back of the coop, this is what I saw:

 

 

The moral of this story is:  Don’t try reasoning with a chicken, just wait for sundown!

Or to borrow a tag line from an old commercial, “Don’t mess with Mother Nature, Dummy!”  (I added the word Dummy for effect, because that is what I felt like!)

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