Watermelon!

Summer roared in early this year on tongues of flaming temps. Usually late May and most of June are moderate. Too may days in the 90's already. Working up a sweat in the garden daily, slugging down plenty of water, but...

Planting Jubilee watermelons was yesterday's chore, to ensure a ready supply. Nothing soothes a parched mouth like watermelon, chilled to perfection. Most everyone enjoys the fruit that embodies summer.

These geese-of-the-past (found while browsing pics in an old file) loved their melon once they decided it wasn't an enemy. We had so many melons that year we could sacrifice half a melon for our Embdens' enjoyment.

 

Never trust poultry around melons. Ever. This Silver Dorking

 hen convinced me to either eat melon in the house or

 pen up opportunist chickens before eating melon outside.

I looked away for a moment to talk to Art. When I turned

back, I faced beady, glaring chicken-eyes. She was standing on

my watermelon slice, on the plate on my lap. GAAAH! I know where chickens walk! Those feet were sunk claw deep in my melon!

Reflexes propelled the plate, melon, and attached chicken into the air. I was done! Finished!

Took me nearly a week of 100 degree plus temps before I could look at watermelon again without feeling queasy.

Godzilla, Another Chicken of the Past

  Another walk down Memory Lane -- meet Godzilla, another porch chicken. A perfect name for her, as she had a similar temperament to that famous Japanese star of science fiction.

She had a convenient habit. Each morning she left an egg in her nest in this corner of the porch. Want an egg for breakfast? Open the door, lean out, and reach for that freshly laid, glowing brown egg. Some day it was so fresh the bloom (protective coating, applied just before egg is laid) hadn't even dried on it. Perfect eggs, at least AAA Grade, orangey egg yolk standing high and proud in the frying pan. Until one terrible morning....

I reached out and found her on her nest wearing a most curmudgeon-like look on her face. Not moving, she dared me to reach under her. Does she look friendly in the picture above? No, she had gone "broody", and she had plans for this egg and the subsequent ones. Each day she laid a new one, until she had a clutch of  ten. Those eggs were hers, and violence was the preferred method to deal with the kidnapper of her future children. She pecked like a coiled snake striking. Drawing blood made her happy. I could tell by the way she smacked her beak after she connected with my hand or wrist. She never lifted off that nest as long as I was visible.

She developed such an evil mood it was dangerous for the grandbabies to come to the door. The solution was a cage. How to move vicious and violent Godzilla? We waited until she went to sleep; while in chicken sleep-stupor, she and her nest were scooped up and placed into a cage on the porch.

Notice how "Spud" (Grandbaby Matthew) kept his hands out of her reach? Her chicks had hatched and she was Super Mom, able to reach through cage wire in a single strike. Banties are well known for their mothering, and Godzilla was a first-rate example. One very scary chicken. You might see a Coke bottle of water hung on the back of the cage; we couldn't reach in to water her, so she had to drink from a bunny bottle. Food was poured through the top.

This chick is not one of Godzilla's, I wouldn't have tried to take one away from her. It's from a hatchery order we made a year ago. This chick is the same size as Godzilla's hatchlings on day one. The coin is a quarter, to give some scale to the size of the chicks. Some even had the feathered legs like this one, as the rooster back then was feather-footed and feather-legged.

Sadly, free ranging porch chickens have a limited survival rate, even though they have strategies to avoid predators. She hated being caged, and slept high in a tree to avoid capture ever again. Godzilla came down and set on her next nest somewhere on the ground out in the woods or goat pasture. We never found her or the nest. I miss my morning egg from the porch, and I miss her, too.

Legendary Chicken

Dork crowed and laid eggs,taught cats manners, and  sulked when we built the new porch.                                                     

Who ?           

     

Dork was a Silver grey Dorking chicken we owned four years ago,  one of  my favorite oddball birds. There are many Dork stories, but here are three.

She wore a hen-suit, feather colors patterned typically for the female of the Dorking breed. She laid eggs regularly for quite some time.  Until the day "she" crowed. Egg laying dropped off from there. I admit to being startled the first time I saw her crow -- a double-take, in fact! I scurried off to my reference books and the internet. I found out that breeds, especially the old and rare ones like Dorkings( over 2000 years old) can be overbred and result in some oddball results.

Sometimes the hormone balance can change radically with age and some hens become "roosters". Talk about a challenging Change-of-Life. Imagine hitting menopause and turning into a guy. No insult intended, menfolk, but thank you --NO!  At any rate she continued to crow and took over the flock of free running chickens.

From Dork's point of view, once the flock was under control, the cats had to be next. Breakfast (cat food) was served to chicken folk and cat people on the old porch each morning. The cats were young and easily impressed by sharp pecks and arial attacks. Chickens ate first, then graciously allowed the cats to clean up what was left. Once they exhibited proper manners cats were allowed to eat beside the chickens as long as they didn't get too uppity and try to hog the food.

A new batch of kittens tested  Dork's patience one summer day. She sat on the porch dozing when the kits began their stalk. At some miniscule sound Dork popped one eye open and peered at the kittens. They didn't notice her watching until they were a foot from their goal. Dork exploded  into a feathered fury; she chased and beat on those kittens until they were tired. She continued until SHE was tired. Amazingly, Dork really didn't hurt the babies, just taught them their place in the flock. They joined the rest of the feather-cats in the combined flock of birds and cats.  An odd sight.

One thing was beyond Dork's power to control. The humans ruined everything when they began falling through the old porch and decided to tear it off. "She" watched, aghast, from a distance as the humans destroyed her castle.  Reduced to sleeping on a barely strong enough twig on the tree next to the ruins ( see top picture), she glared and scolded before bed each night. She slept there every night until the new porch was started, then went off to find  a new spot in the goat pasture, where most of her flock hung out since construction began. I think they couldn't stand the noise of saws, nailguns and old fashioned hammers.

She refused to use the new porch. The rest of the flock would appear for breakfast, but not Dork. She ate goat food instead, and never forgave us for our vandalism.We certainly were no friends of hers after what we'd done. We'd hear her crow from the pasture, and she'd socialize with the flock when they came to drink from the goat water pool, or scratch about in the shade.

One day the crowing disappeared,  but the cats  apparently still tell their kittens stories of their chicken leader. The new cats have always respected the chickens, even without Dork, a HomePlace legend.

Antonio Rides Again

Squint through the wire to see a chicken with courage "second to none and the intellegence of almost one". An old gamer term, it fits this bird perfectly.

The peanut butter bait had already been stolen by a crafty raccoon, and Antonio just barrelled right into the trap and stepped on the trigger plate. He probably entered it to get closer to the roosters he loves to tease. The door crashed down and he was trapped right where the other chickens could see him and laugh chicken laughs at him. Bad plan, Antonio.

When we found him, he was stomping from one end of the trap to the other. Hackles out, he was fuming at his situation. The mighty free ranging "roo" was caged. Probably didn't help that I was laughing, too. When his hackles are up, a rooster looks like he's swallowed a feathered umbrella which opened on the way down his gullet.

You'd think Antonio would come out of the trap when the door was opened? No, he scrambled to the other end to get away from Art. Perhaps tilting the cage would encourage him along in the right direction? No, he went into the far corner and held on while Art shook the cage. Chickens on a slanted surface will prefer to go "up", as I recall. Finally Art tipped the trap completely upside down and the combination of gravity and energetic shaking dislodged Antonio, who ran shrieking into the goat pasture.

No doubt psychologically scarred by his experience, Antonio will avoid the live trap next time, even if the peanut butter is still there.

Helene

Antonio Banty-Deras

One hundred-fifty percent attitude packed into a banty body, that's Antonio Banty-Deras. Three years old, he's our longest living free range chicken. The first commotion of the day in the chicken yard and the last ruckus at night, you'll find Antonio at the bottom of it.

Antonio begins his day aggravating the penned roosters. He struts, he preens, he crows. He takes a dust bath as close to the wire as he can; flopping, rolling, and kicking up dust which drifts into the face of the full size roosters. Four times his size, the big roosters are "clapping" their wings and clawing at the wire, Antonio flings himself at one, spurs outstretched. The big "roo" goes insane, clawing and striking at the wire. Antonio slowly prances off, crowing in triumph.

He spends his day alternating between teasing roosters and eating. Its wonderful when he can steal someone else's food. Chickens here get kitchen scraps and greens for variety, and food in cages with larger mesh is a target if it gets within reach of Antonio's beak. He'll stand outside a cage waiting for a morsel to get close to the wire and ... snatch! It's his. Out of beak-reach of the offended bird, he slowly picks and swallows the snack one morsel at a time. He'll steal greens from cages even though he has a world of fresh green plants around him. It just tastes better spiced with offended screeching, I suppose.

Antonio's secret to long life is his ability to reach a high roost to sleep at night. Generally he sleeps in a tree in the animal area. As the sun sets, Antonio makes ready to roost. He flies up to the top of a rabbit hutch, accompanied by the deafening "cheers" of the flock. Next he flies to the lowest branch, six or seven feet above. "The crowd goes wild!" He works his way up higher into the branches about 20 - 30 feet from the ground. Settled in next to the trunk, he makes a final crow and dozes off. The Chicken Cacophany Choir peters out, and settles in to sleep.

There have been a few occasions in which Antonio's roost was in poor taste, specifically in a tree over Art's truck. The truck was painted with bird droppings; Art painted the air blue the next morning. Antonio was encouraged to sleep elsewhere that evening.

The worst spot he chose was the porch, up in the rafters. Warm, dry and out of the wind, it was the best place he'd found. I couldn't agree because he painted the porch floor. That bird was determined to sleep there. Art chased him down, and then off the porch with a broom. Antonio screamed curses all the way out into the night, and up into his tree. The next night he was there again. A repeat the chasing and screaming of curses - from both.

The following night we went to our writers' group and returned late. I'd walked over to check something in the porch kitchen (in the dark) when a shreiking, feathery demon flew down from above, buzzed my head, and flew into the night. I screamed! When my heart stopped pounding, I figured it was Antonio, caught in the act. I must have frightened him, too, even without a broom.

He didn't return to the porch that season, but eventually winter will return, and he'll try the porch again. The broom is waiting for Antonio and his outsize attitude.

Helene