Good old Anglo Saxon nursery rhymes
The only thing the American robin (Turdus migratorius) and the original robin redbreast (Erithacus rubecula) have in common is red feathers. They are otherwise completely different birds. The American robin is a sort of big thrush; the British robin is one of those tiny round puffball bastards, like a chickadee.
The robin was once voted Britain’s favorite bird. He’s a cheeky, aggressive little sod, often pictured perching on the handle of a garden spade. Because, apparently, he’ll fly down and do that if you’ve been turning earth, to check if you’ve dug up any worms.
He’s also one of the few songbirds that overwinters in the UK. Very confusing to an American, all the robins on Christmas cards.
Anyhoo, I just ran across this: the nursery rhyme “Little Robin Red breast” boasts an unusual number of variations. The reason? Trying to get around the original last line:
Little Robin Red breast,
Sitting on a pole,
Nidde, Noddle, Went his head.
And poop went his Hole.
So. There you go.
January 31, 2012 — 10:50 pm
Comments: 19
Another internet myth, exploded
Oh, man…I don’t believe I forgot to tell you this story. It was damp on Christmas Eve, so I let the chickens into the kitchen while I made rolls. I threw a towel over an old chair, and they sat on it, burbling happily, while I kneaded dough.
And then one of them farted.
It wasn’t a prolonged, nuanced affair, but it was a definite blaart. And no, it wasn’t a poop that coincidentally made a noise. This is significant, because the topic has come up on this blog before. You’ll get over a million and a half returns on the Google query “do chickens fart?”
(My favorite is from Google Answers. The question was “Do chickens Fart? if so can you light the fart on fire?” And the answer voted #1 is “your father doesn’t beat you enough.”)
Anyhoo, the definitive answer is NO, chickens do not fart. The site Farting Chickens put the question to 22 professors and got a bunch of blah-blah-blah about incompletely digested carbohydrates and short colons and…well. No, they cried. Chickens do not fart!
Well, Poindexters, there were only the five of us in that room, and SOMEbody cut the cheese. Let rip. Played the butt trumpet. Fired a retro rocket. Popped a fluffy. Stepped on a duck. Baked an ass biscuit. Fill in your favorite euphemism.
I didn’t see who, but my money is on Mapp. She’s the Eric Cartman of chickens.
December 29, 2011 — 10:33 pm
Comments: 62
Happy Thanksgiving from Stinky and the whole flock!
With the colder weather, the older chooks have gotten really crabby. Much chasing and pecking, most of it falling on poor, gormless Vita. So I bought some anti-pecking spray, which is supposed to stop pecking and feather plucking, mostly by tasting bitter.
I figured I’d try it out on Violet first — that’s the off-white one — because she gets a share of the pecks, but she’s utterly fearless. Experiment on the bold chicken, not the shy one. I had no idea — anti-pecking spray is brown, gummy and smells awful. She looks filthy and smells like an old-fashioned BandAid.
So now I have a brown, gummy, stinky chicken. It’s hard to see how that’s going to help. Hell, I was tempted to peck her myself.
Of course we do Thanksgiving in this household. It’s my favorite holiday, and Uncle B didn’t take much persuasion to adopt an extra turkey feast. We do it as an evening meal, though, so I’m still wrapped up pre-mashing sweet potatoes and pre-baking rolls.
Then — let the gluttony begin!
Have a great Thanksgiving, y’all. Don’t strangle any aunties or brain your brother-in-law.
November 24, 2011 — 5:19 pm
Comments: 37
Guess what? Chicken butts!
So the chickens put themselves to bed at dusk every night, and half an hour later I steal out to set up the wildlife camera and look in on them. Say goodnight, as it were.
When I look in the henhouse, I’m going to see one of the following things:
butt-butt-butt-butt
butt-butt-butt-beak
butt-butt-beak-butt
butt-beak-butt-butt
beak-butt-butt-butt
butt-beak-butt-beak
beak-butt-butt-beak
butt-beak-beak-butt
beak-beak-butt-butt
butt-butt-beak-beak
beak-butt-beak-beak
butt-beak-beak-beak
beak-beak-beak-beak
So I have two questions. First, for you programmer types, this is basically a four-digit binary number, right? There must be some neat-o mathemagical way to work out how many permutations there are, and to ensure I haven’t missed any. Um, right?
And secondly — WHAT ARE THE CHICKENS TRYING TO TELL ME?
p.s. I know what you’re thinking. You think this is beak-butt-beak-butt. Well, you’re wrong. It’s always the two older girls at the left and the two babies at the right, but I lifted Mapp off her perch to check her feet and accidentally put her back in the wrong place (she’s going to be very cross when she wakes up in the wrong spot tomorrow).
So today’s secret message is BEAK-BEAK-BUTT-BUTT.
October 27, 2011 — 9:38 pm
Comments: 44
O HAI
I haven’t posted tonight? Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure I…oh, okay, okay. Fine. Hang on. Let me rustle up a chicken picture.
Got distracted. I guess I fail blog today; even my spammers are giving advice:
You will have to master the artwork and technology of site visitors to your website. Is the web page without site visitors is like having an ice cream store within the desert, situated one hundred km from the closest highway. It has the most efficient ice cream in the world, but when anyone enters your retailer, you will be defeated.
Dang it! Now what will I do with all this efficient ice cream?
Oh, hey — I chased a fox all around the yard in my socks this afternoon. (No, Dr Seuss, the fox wasn’t in my socks). It was just at dusk and the chickens had gone to roost but were not locked up yet, and I look out the kitchen and see a big, fat fox out my back door like some kind of blues lyric. Man, you shoulda seen me move.
“AAAAAAUUUUUURRRRR!” I screamed. And, “WWWOOOOOOORRRRAAAAGH!” And, “YAAAAARRRRRAAAAAAGH!” All running and flailing and waving my arms.
God, I hope the neighbors weren’t sitting in the garden.
Okay, Dead Pool tomorrow, 6 sharp Weasel Blog Time. Be here or be a railroad engineer!
October 6, 2011 — 11:13 pm
Comments: 32
Satan’s early warning chicken
Still feel like crap. The way my colds go, I feel awful at the beginning but don’t sound bad, and when I start to sound hacky and snotty, I’m actually feeling a lot better. So never with the sympathy when I need it.
Anyhow, I forgot to tell you…yesterday, mid-morning, Mapp started to alarm call. This is the sound they make when there’s a fox or a cat or a tractor or other threat they’re pretty sure they can take on. You know, the bok-bok-bok-be-GAAAAK bok-bok.
She doesn’t usually do that. She’s the quietest of the four. But she kept at it, and suddenly…there was a knock at the door.
Muffled voice: is this house really four hundred years old?
Uncle B: Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Muffled voice: muffled response.
-=SLAM=-
Yeah, British JW’s! Who knew? There are quite a lot out here, and they’ll come right into your back garden (that’s a really severe British no-no) and everything. I couldn’t think of a less British idea than sending religious missionaries out to challenge a Limey’s private space, but they do.
From what I’m told, the Church of England is a little snooty and high church for some, so out in the country there are flourishing colonies of JW’s and Strict and Particular Baptists and whatnot.
Anyhow, we got us an Early Warning Chicken!
September 15, 2011 — 8:14 pm
Comments: 36
Hm. Must be Autumn
Behold my posse. My crew. My flock. Yesterday was the first time all four of them hopped up on the kitchen chair. Evening roosting behavior. Hilarious — I threw a towel over their heads and they all promptly conked off asleep. Then I could dust them for mites and have a good look at their feet (Mapp needs a pedicure) and their vents.
Yes, dear readers, I inspect chicken bottoms.
They flock together well enough in the daytime now, but the new girls and the old girls still sleep in separate enclosures. That has to change by Winter; there’s plenty of room in the main henhouse for four.
Sadly, it feels distinctly Autumnal out there tonight. So I let them fall asleep in the dark kitchen, then I tiptoed them out one by one and put them on the perch together in the big house (except Violet, who prefers to sleep on the floor).
I’ve put this off for so long because they all pick on Vita (the big, beautiful bird on the left). Even her nestmate Violet has a go at her. It’s horrible to watch. Vita meekly accepts her place at the bottom of the pecking order and lies still, beak down in the grass, patiently letting the other girls give her a few good pecks whenever they like. First time I saw this, I thought the poor bird had dropped dead and the others were trying to wake her up.
Nature. What an asshole.
They don’t peck hard enough to hurt her, but I worry about her being stuck inside the small run, unable to get away. So! I have set the alarm for six in the morning. I haven’t seen six in the morning since I left the Motherland.
I better get drinking.
September 5, 2011 — 8:49 pm
Comments: 29
They watch us. Always.
I don’t know. Somehow the out of focus makes this one funnier to me.
Got jammed up tonight. Had to help Uncle B do some proofreading. So…I dunno…how’s about I fob you off with the ten jokes voted the best of the Edinburgh Fringe arts festival:
10) “My friend died doing what he loved … Heroin.”
9) “I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can’t even be bothered to check my OWN voicemails.”
8) “Someone asked me recently – what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I’m not falling for that one again, wife.”
7) “I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure.”
6) “My mother told me, you don’t have to put anything in your mouth you don’t want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards.”
5) “I was playing chess with my friend and he said, ‘Let’s make this interesting’. So we stopped playing chess.”
4) “Drive-Thru McDonalds was more expensive than I thought… once you’ve hired the car…”
3) “People say ‘I’m taking it one day at a time’. You know what? So is everybody. That’s how time works.”
2) “Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.”
1) “I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”
Ba-dum tssss.
September 1, 2011 — 10:16 pm
Comments: 24
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.
August 31, 2011 — 11:19 pm
Comments: 20
Who?
Look, it’s me! Holding a owl!
There’s an owl rescue around here that turns up at some of the village fêtes and for a couple of quid donation they will let you hold an owl. So I did.
This pretty boy was taken from his mother on the day he hatched (she killed the first one to break shell), so he has no bleeding idea he’s an owl. You can stroke him and give him smoochies and he won’t rip the nose off your face and eat it right in front of you.
More than I could say for at least two of my chickens.
We have our end-of-Summer long weekend now, and I think we’ve just done the last of the fêtes.
Actually, the last fêtes are the flower festivals. These are peculiar little spectacles. They’re flower arrangements + tableaux, all around a village church.
So, next to the altar, there’s a flower arrangement, a golf ball, a hockey stick and an old sneaker: A Tribute to Sport. Under the stained glass window, a flower arrangement, some model cars, a set of car keys and an L plate: Passing Your Driving Test. (I am not making these up; I really saw them).
You walk around and gawp at them (there’s a program so you can keep them straight), then everyone has a cup of tea and a slice of cake and goes home.
Every Freaking Day of my life is a Monty Python sketch.
August 29, 2011 — 9:33 pm
Comments: 29