Boneless chicken
Chickens blissing out in the sun dissolve into formless heaps of feathers.
When we see a cat folded in half backwards off a sofa with his paws in the air and his mouth open, we’re like d’awwwww, he’s drooling. But a chicken relaxing in the grass looks like a stern object lesson about pesticides in the garden.
Relaxed chickens are impossible to paint.
June 22, 2022 — 7:56 pm
Comments: 9
More, d’aww…
Yes, they both hatched. I forgot to tell you. You can just make out a second beak at the arrow.
Pigeon number two is several days younger and therefore smaller. I couldn’t really see him until the parents started leaving the nest for longer periods.
Both parents are still highly attentive. I can’t tell if they both feed the babies, but they both babysit. We’re having a bit of a mini-heatwave at the moment and the parents don’t sit on the nest, they sit on the edge and provide shade from the morning sun.
Honestly, smarter than I thought pigeons were.
Have a good weekend!
June 17, 2022 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 5
Meet my cleanup crew
They they go through a lot for this for this. The chicken run is clear around the other side of the house and they have to go through a fence (specifically set up to keep them out) along the way. Anything for those sweet, sweet Friskies.
You will never forget the unmistakable sound of three beaks bouncing off a cat’s bowl. Who needs a Roomba?
p.s. actually, I do. I hate Hoovering. Have any of you got one? Does it work?
June 16, 2022 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 6
Start the weekend with a d’awwww
A couple of weeks ago, I watered the window boxes in the office, turned my back for a moment, and when I turned around again – an egg! Why this daft pigeon decided to lay an egg in wet earth, I don’t know, but it’s not quite as bad a spot as it sounds. There’s a roof overhang, so it stays dry when it rains and she’s relatively protected under all those geraniums.
She laid a second egg two days later. Eighteen days it takes to incubate a pigeon egg and I’ve been watching her cautiously. Sometimes, the male (I assume) comes and sits and gives her a chance to rest and feed. It’s easy to spot the difference: she’s got a dark gray head with white speckles and he’s pale gray.
I hardly ever see the nest without a bird on it, but yesterday she stood up and – behold, baby pigeon! (bottom right). It must have hatched moments before, because it’s still wet and the shell is still there.
Baby pigeons are ugly mutant looking creatures, so I won’t give you a closeup of the little bugger, but I love the look on her face. She’s probably just startled and I’m anthropomorphising, but she looks like a proud mama to me.
By Monday, we’ll see if the other one hatches or is a dud. Good weekend, all!
June 10, 2022 — 6:16 pm
Comments: 3
This is not an obituary
Spoon did not turn up at rollcall Friday night. My favorite chicken didn’t come home to roost.
You remember Spoon, the goofiest of Polands? I’ve been bailing her out of trouble since she was a chick.
She wasn’t in the field next door (she’s done this). She wasn’t in the neighbor’s garden (and this). She wasn’t up a tree (multiple times) or on a roof (she quickly discovered that’s where the bees are). Once it gets dark, you kind of have to give up and hope for the best come morning.
Next day, Uncle B came down early and the cat was complaining loudly. There was a chicken in the kitchen. Standing back in a corner, silently. We remember finding her in the kitchen at noon (they sneak in for cat food), but we had no idea she never left.
She’d been there all afternoon and all evening while we were banging around cooking lunch and then supper. The lights must have interfered with her sleep, but she didn’t make a sound. Just standing there.
Of course, being a chicken, she had shat all over the floor, but hey.
May 30, 2022 — 6:14 pm
Comments: 2
Sunset chickens
Quick snapshot of the girls with ladies’ man Mo this evening. Huh. Doesn’t really work in black and white.
Uncle B was treated to another dead rat on the floor this morning and, for a little variety, a dead bunny on the threshold this afternoon.
The bunny was undoubtedly a gift from the cat. He’s not usually so generous. We know this because we don’t feed him much and yet he’s very fat. The vet didn’t scold us when we took him in to have his leg looked at (all better now, thanks), so I guess he’s not dangerously fat.
He must be absolutely stuffed full of bunny and whacking them for sport at this point.
May 19, 2022 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 2
Ending the week on a chicken
Playing with my new phone camera. I did tell you I got a new phone for my birfday, yes?
I stuck with Motorola because I liked my old one and I figured it would have a shorter learning curve. Yes, sort of. Android has the weirdest insistence on tinkering with basic navigation in each new version. And taking away important features.
Like, this version makes it hard to customize the various alert noises. You can change ringtones easily enough, but the rest of the apps seem to do their own thing. I do not like this.
So I downloaded an app that lets me customize sounds, but now I get the default system sound PLUS my custom sound.
It gets better. The app I downloaded will let me assign text to notifications, so my email alert is ’email’ and my twitter alert is ‘twitter’, etc. But I didn’t like the robot lady voice. There was a knob to pitch tune it, so I tuned it all the way down to RASPY LIPLESS GOBLIN voice.
A bajillion times a day (I get a lot of spam), a baritone hobgoblin goes ‘bing-bong***EMAIL***’ or ‘woot-woot***WHATSAPP***’ and it’s cracking me up.
Have a good Friday the 13th and rest of the week, y’all!
May 13, 2022 — 6:59 pm
Comments: 8
First egg!
All my girls stopped laying at once last year, really early. In fact, I strong suspect they have a hidey hole in the brush and some day I’ll find it and a gigantic pile of rotten eggs.
The girls (I have two left) were locked up today, so I got an egg. It’s a little early.
I’m pretty sure this one was from Spoon. She’s a poland and daft as a very daft thing indeed. I found this egg on the floor of the henhouse, and that’s Spoon all over. Wherever she may be, she squats and plops out an egg and moves on like it’s nothin’.
Not like the fussy, broody little pekins.
p.s. P. J. O’Rourke has joined the Choir Eternal. No, nobody had him.
February 15, 2022 — 8:07 pm
Comments: 7
Does this look lucky to you?!
So, a seagull shat on me today.
I was walking past a lady talking on her cellphone with a nice little dog at her side. I bent over to say hello to the dog, and seagull dipped out of the sky and strafed down my back.
The horrified look on the lady’s face almost made up for it.
Then the whole rest of the day, everyone consoled me by saying getting shat on by a seagull is good luck. You ever heard this? It is not part of my store of legends.
Poking around the web, it does indeed seem to be a thing. In Britain, it’s seagulls. For the Russians and the Turks, any old bird will do. It generally means money coming your way (a Turk buying a lottery ticket with shit on his head is a cartoon staple). This article is representative.
My grandfather took my grandmother on a first date on a river boat in New Orleans. 1920 maybe. Something of a dandy, he was wearing an all-white suit. Right off the bat, a seagull pooped on his knee. He spent the rest of the date strategically holding his Panama hat over his knee.
Was it lucky? They got married. That could go either way.
That same grandfather never once, since he was weaned, missed eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s day. For luck, if you don’t know. He had a bowl brought to him in the hospital. Then he died.
No comment.
January 4, 2022 — 8:10 pm
Comments: 10
Merry Chickmas!
The last chicken of the year is…a robin. He’s an honorary member of my flock. We always have one, and he always comes to feed with the chooks.
You’ll note it’s a completely different species than an American robin – more like a chickadee in size and shape. Here he is in color. The European robin (Erithacus rubecula).
The robin is beloved of Brits and frequent symbol of Christmas here because they are around all Winter and they’re cheeky little bastards. If they were the size of seagulls, they’d probably have a bodycount.
And with that, I’m back to work tomorrow. I hope you had a great break and thank you for indulging me!
January 3, 2022 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 5