The chicken who sleeps in the kitchen
It’s been a rough old Summer for this manky bird.
This is Mapp, the ginger chicken. She laid her first eggs this Spring. Three or four of them, then promptly went broody.
It took me almost two and a half months to snap her out of it, but it happened overnight. I put her by herself in a wire cage with a box to sleep in but, daft bird that she is, she preferred to sleep in the open. Later that night, Miz Fox showed up and gave it the old college try. That did it.
Scared straight, as it were.
So she moulted. Lucia, Mapp’s clutch mate, had by this time become thoroughly accustomed to having the perch to herself of an evening, and she damn well liked it. To register her displeasure at the return of the old arrangement, she tweaked all the feathers off the back of Mapp’s neck and head in a sort of reverse mohawk. Plucked her bald.
So now every evening just before Chicken Bed Time, there’s a flutter and a thump and we find Mapp perched on the kitchen stool with a look that says, “no, no…don’t worry about me. Um, I’ll be fine right here.” I have to wait until dark and Lucia is fast asleep to tiptoe out and put Mapp in the henhouse.
Our first mistake was naming these crazy peckerheads.
Posted: August 31st, 2011 under animals, birds, personal.
Comments: 20
Comments
Comment from Spad13
Time: August 31, 2011, 11:29 pm
Maybe you could write a childrens book “Poor Mapp the Kitchen Chicken”
Comment from Mark Matis
Time: August 31, 2011, 11:49 pm
Have you considered putting a pot on stool, maybe with some carrots and celery and…
}:-]
Comment from Bruno Braun
Time: September 1, 2011, 12:03 am
…and some barley and some leeks.
Comment from Mark Matis
Time: September 1, 2011, 12:23 am
Bruno – You da man!
Although I suspect that Asbo would prefer it without the leeks…
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 1, 2011, 12:25 am
So would I! Leeks! Onions! Ptooey!
Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: September 1, 2011, 12:32 am
Uncle Badger doesn’t eat onions?
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 1, 2011, 12:51 am
I don’t, Can’t Hark…. not intentionally, at any rate.
Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: September 1, 2011, 12:56 am
Ah. <>
I’d offer my sympathies, but I expect you’re good with it. And if it works for you. . .
Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: September 1, 2011, 1:23 am
Odd. Between the two brackets was (enclosed in another set of brackets) “tries to imagine cooking without onions”. Now. . .what shibboleth of the html programming community did I violate that time? Although, hm, I have a dim feeling I know. I should have used the brackets in the OTHER order, mm?
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: September 1, 2011, 1:52 am
That sounds like a good name for a spy spoof. “The Chicken that slept in the kitchen”….
You could follow it up with “The Chicken who came in from the Cold” and “The Chicken from U.N.C.L.E. badger”…….
Comment from AC
Time: September 1, 2011, 2:59 am
If you eat that poor bird, she will haunt your dreams.
Comment from Randy Rager
Time: September 1, 2011, 3:04 am
Chickens can carry fine names. Fried is my favorite.
Comment from beasn
Time: September 1, 2011, 3:39 am
I don’t know sweasel…with your estate of interesting critters, yourselves included, you could come up with some sweet children’s books, as spad and then scuba suggested, under your alter ego/pen name Stoaty.
I’d buy ’em.
Even if the stories sucked, which I doubt, I’d still get one for the pikchers.
Comment from MIke C.
Time: September 1, 2011, 7:52 am
Stoatie, I’m becoming seriously concerned about your mental health…
Meanwhile (and speaking of critters), do you know what a “Thagomizer” is? It’s that cluster of spikes at the end of the tail on a stegosaurid dinosaur. I know, I know – who cares? But check out the etymology…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer
Heh. Hat tip – ‘rayra’ at GCP.
Comment from Oceania
Time: September 1, 2011, 9:16 am
You haven’t been feeding it those old bone meal stocks from the back shed left over from the 1980’s?
Comment from Scubafreak
Time: September 1, 2011, 9:21 pm
Oh Gawd, PLEASE!! No ‘Poultry in Motion’ jokes today. I have a headache….. LOL
Comment from Mojo
Time: September 2, 2011, 5:42 am
Rename her.
I suggest “Pan Fried”…
Comment from Dan Patterson
Time: September 3, 2011, 2:21 am
All the chicken stock comments aside: Let the old bird be happy howsomever she can. And it makes Stoaty all twittery so that’s even more gooder.
The photos on the wall caught my eye. An early (pre chin-turret) B-17 of the 8th Air Force? Tell us more, pretty please.
And I hope chickies are happy with the coming fall.
Comment from Mark Matis
Time: September 3, 2011, 11:48 am
No, Dan Patterson, NO!!! Surely the chickens are not going to FALL!!!
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