Thursday, September 3, 2009

fowl

See that small bird in the middle of the lawn that probably needs mowing and the hog house that definitely needs paint. She made history this week. Not anything that would even get covered in the Fulda Free Press, just with Priya and Sam.

Ever since the guy that sold us her and her five companions promised they would lay colored eggs, the kids have been waiting. The six plain brown ones we bought at the same time have been laying for two or three weeks - plain dark brown eggs.

I have even been wondering if perhaps we would need to put some chicken in the freezer for winter since the speckled pigeon-looking ones hadn't seemed to lay yet. But Priya came rushing in two days ago with two small greenish-blue eggs.

In other news also this week, this fine black specimen with the feathers on his legs is definitely a rooster. Since we haven't ever worked in the chicken hatching business and have no expertise in gender determination, we do the next best thing - wait for it to crow. He did this week. Although we've had our suspicious after observing some other roosterly activities earlier, the issue is now settled. This is his 3rd grade picture because he has grown about six more inches and developed most splendid plumes on his tail.



His duties in his current position as head and only rooster may not be as certain for a couple reasons. First being, my opinion, developed from several unfortunate instances in my younger years involving several fighting roosters and a jumping-from-the-rafter rooster. In fact I don't ever remember having a nice pleasant friendly rooster at all. Maybe they don't exist.

As the curator and main wage earner who has to buy the feed for worthless and worthwhile animals, Mark is always on the look-out for ways to trim costs and keep the stock mostly limited to critters who actually do something productive. This raven beauty (as seen above) is definitely on the "worthless" list alive, probably several places above the two rabbits and the kitten that live here.

This puts another twist on the phrase "better dead than alive" - as in warm steaming chicken noodle soup or aromatic roasted chicken on a Sunday noon.

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