Day 21: drain
Drain. Did not much stir the imagination.
I suppose I could’ve drawn a whole chicken being sucked down a drain, but that’s too much like work.
October 21, 2018 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 6
Day 20: breakable
That first little hole a chick pecks in the egg is called a pip. This egg has pipped.
I did put some fertile eggs under a chicken this year. It didn’t work out so good. Twelve eggs in two different goes. Result: three chicks, two of whom are boys. And then a fox ate the mama.
No, I have no idea if it’s going to work out when the boys are all growed up.
October 20, 2018 — 8:10 pm
Comments: 9
Day 19: scorched
Because they’re sunbathing.
One of the happiest sights for a chicken keeper is watching a pair of birds dust-bath together in the sun.
Sadly, it’s completely unpaintable. Because a bird with its eyes closed and its wings spread blissing out in warm soil in the sun is visually indistinguishable from a dead chicken flung on a dirt heap.
October 19, 2018 — 7:44 pm
Comments: 4
Day 18: bottle
Yes, I suppose a chicken would stick her beak in a bottle, if she thought there was something worth eating in there.
I think she’d be much more likely to peck it for the tink sound. I’m not the first to notice that chooks will peck things they cannot possibly mistake for food, over and over, because they appear to like interesting sounds.
October 18, 2018 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 9
Day 17: swollen
Do chickens eat bees? Do they get stung?
There’s a surprisingly lively conversation about it online. There are bee- and chicken-keepers who deliberately keep hives near their henhouses. They say the chickens help by eating dead bees and hive parasites and almost never get stung. There are bee- and chicken-keepers who say their chickens won’t touch a bee, dead or alive.
And there was one poor soul having no luck at all because her chickens stationed themselves outside the hive entrance and plucked delicious bees out of the air as soon as they appeared.
Our garden is full of bees, including some great big (rare) bumblers. This is bee conservation country. I’ve seen my chooks chase them (and the cats too, for that matter) but never seen them eat one.
October 17, 2018 — 7:00 pm
Comments: 11
Day 16: Angular
Last night, my youngest girl decided she’d really rather sleep in a tree, if it was all the same to me.
It was not all the same to me. There’s a fox about. To her credit, she managed to work her way surprisingly high in the branches. She’d probably have been safe enough, unless she came down at dawn.
I started clipping at the blackberry brambles clearing a path to her, and she plummeted down to earth like a watermelon in a hail of leaves.
She started to do the same tonight, but thought better of it.
I have just discovered I have an #inktober tag.
October 16, 2018 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 12
Day 15: weak
Not sure who’s weak here, the chicken or the worm.
Sidenote: one of the funniest chicken moments ever, the first time I gave a hen a strand of spaghetti. She must’ve thought it was the awesomest worm EVAR. She held her beak in the air and did a victory lap all around the garden, the other chickens running after her grabbing at it.
Later that Summer, she fluttered up and landed with a ripe splat in the middle of my plate of spaghetti, dumping my lunch in the grass. Loved her pasta, did Lucia.
October 15, 2018 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 7
Day 14: Clock
The Dillards did a song called “What’s Time to a Hog?” which seems appropriate here.
Yeah, it’s digital. Which sucks, but there was no way I intended to draw a clock face in perspective. Too much like hard work.
Stupid ellipses.
October 14, 2018 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 2
Day 13: guarded
But not guarded well enough, alas!
October 13, 2018 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 5
Day 12: whale
In truth, chickens do really badly in water. They’ve been known to drown in a bucket or even their own water bowl. They’ve been pulled alive out of a dip in the pond only to die anyway out of pique.
I have occasionally bathed a chicken, but they are not fond of it. “Mad as a wet hen” is a real thing.
October 12, 2018 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 6