I am psychically linked to my chickens

This is one of several possible post titles for today’s entry.

This seemingly random post title was inspired by this morning’s events.  At about 5AM I bolted awake upright, jumped out of bed and raced to the living room sliding glass doors to check on my chickens.  I assure you, this is not a regular occurrence; I am not in the habit of rising early on my day off, nor of being worried about my chickens in the wee dawn hours.  They weren’t making any noise, and I wouldn’t have heard them if they were anyway (I sleep with earplugs, because Tweed snarks at Piper ALL.NIGHT.LONG under the bed). The dogs were all still fast asleep.

But for some reason, I was awaken by an overwhelming panicky urge to look at my hens (?).  Good thing too … for standing on my lawn staring most hungrily at my feathered ladies, was a young coyote.  She was quite a lot smaller than most of the ‘yotes I see around here, and so intent on my chickens was she that she didn’t notice me 5 feet from her tail – even though the sliding door was open – until I pounded on the glass.  Then she bolted away.

She must be new.  The local coyotes know better than to come around the houses ever since I started letting the dogs out en masse to chase them away (you’d run too if the WooTWoo were chasing you!).  They defecate prodigiously around the back of the acreage, just to let us know they’re still there, but they never come up onto the main lawns anymore.

This is not the only chicken drama in my life lately.  Last week, a visiting dog scared one of my hens literally to death.  She was up on the roost after the Big Chase, panting; keeled over and dropped dead to the floor.  I’m not sure which chicken it was, because I can’t tell the brown ones apart, but it was sad nonetheless.  So to make myself feel better, I went out and bought 4 new pullets (at least, I hope they are pullets … the farmer didn’t know, and neither do I!)

They are Ameraucana hens.

Ameraucanas have ear muffs, which is cool, and they lay blue or green eggs, which is also cool.  Too bad they hate me, all 4 of them.  They won’t come out of the hen house at ALL and when I go in after them, they FREAK OUT!  They are so freaked out the other hens don’t even pick on them, because it would be superfluous to do so.

I’m hoping as they get to know me they will relax a little, because they are cool little chickens and I want to be their friend.

It’s *possible* that I like chickens a little too much.  But … not enough to NOT eat any of these pullets that turn out to be roosters ;-)

Another possible title for today’s entry was going to be “That Stinks.”  Because it does, kinda.  Well, just a little bit actually.  Mostly it’s just really damn CUTE!

ZOMG!  Baby skunk!

We had 6 of them brought into the shelter to await transport to the wildlife rescue.  Most of them spent the time hiding in a pillowcase in a box, but a couple of them wanted to come out and explore…and have their photos taken, of course.

Here’s one of the Officers holding the skunk, because I said “I’m going to blog you holding a skunk!” and he said “No you aren’t.”  And you know me … I always rise to the challenge ;-)

(My PSA for today is: Please do not handle baby wildlife.  Leave that to the mushy shelter staff)

There were some baby squirrels too, but baby squirrels are meaner than shit, and they yelled at me every time I opened the box, and gnashed their terrible little teeth, so I didn’t get any photos of those.

I love my job :)

Another possible title for today’s post was “Aliens: They Haz Landed.”  Cuz I think they did, right in my place of work.

These are The Muggins, known to sensible people as Miniature Pinscher X Pugs.  Angelica and Thor were surrendered to the shelter – they are 10 months old, a bonded brother/sister pair, and very strange looking little creatures indeed.  Tweed concurs … he spent the afternoon hiding from them under my desk.  He wouldn’t even come out to stare at the cookie jar and then stare at visitors so they’d get the hint and give him some.  And Tweed LIVES to come to the shelter to demand cookie offerings from guests.

Anyway, if you’re interest in harbouring a couple of aliens, you can come on down to the DNV shelter and adopt them.  Please.

But I’m warning you … they’re crazy.

This is a random puppy interlude.

I spent most of the day gardening – I put up trellises for the tomotoes and cucumbers, and hung up the strawberries, since last year when I planted them on the ground, the slugs ate most of them.

And I planted my other vegetables, the lettuce and garlic and peppers and sunchoke.

And then I was going to mow the lawn, but I was too tired.  And the dogs were bored.

So we played a little Holey Roller, which I could do whilst sitting on the porch.  Even Woo was bored enough to play.

Don’t photograph my naked belleh!

And now I think I’ll take a page out of TWooie’s book, and just chillax.