Daily Drama 78 – The Princess in the Bathtub

When I was house hunting and saw the giant Jacuzzi bathtub here, my first thought was “I can have turtles!” In fact, the tub is so big that filling it empties the water heater and the water temperature drops two or three degrees every minute the jets are on. No heater. So the kids had half a dozen friends in there a few times that first summer, but you know the rest.

Princess flakes out in the bathtub.

My Mille Fleur banty hen has been living there since last October. While I was out of town, The Bartender found her hunkered down in the aviary, looking forlorn. The vet diagnosed her with a heart murmur and prescribed two medications. The heart medicine was originally prescribed for twice a day. We have since increased it to three times daily because she slept all day on twice a day. On three times a day she is walking around and even goes outdoors for a bit in the afternoon. The other medication is for her congestion (and pitiful wheezing), twice a day.

I used to pen her near my computer, but she creates quite a minefield.

Princess Blur came in as a young hen named Fleur almost three years ago. Her sister had passed and she was despondent in an annoyingly vocal demonstration of grief. She came here so she would have a flock and maybe not be so sad. It turns out she is just a crazy loud hen with many vocalizations I have yet to catch on video. She’s smart and sassy and has never considered laying an egg. It was about a year ago that she became ill and now she lives indoors and I thought you might be interested in what it’s like to have a hen indoors. Besides messy.

She spends most of her day penned in the living room.

I had surgery a while ago and that means I am in and out of the bathroom at odd hours. When she first moved indoors, Princess used to roost nicely on a dowel I placed across the top of the bathtub. Since my surgery, she has migrated to the edge of the bathtub where she can see The Bartender reading in his chair. She stays there during the night, like a prissy little vulture, waiting for an invalid to scuttle in there to be startled by her unexpected looming presence. Fool that I am, and so as not to disturb the sleeping mini-buzzard, I quietly greet her as I enter, prompting her to stretch, stand and prance along the edge until I escape. One night, half asleep in the bedroom, I heard the tiny thud that meant she had jumped down to the floor. The Bartender found her in the morning, at the doorway threshold, not quite beyond the tile floor, but cautiously short of the bedroom carpet.

This is how you hold a miniature hen.

The early-rising Bartender gives her the morning meds. It’s easy: simply hold the tiny meds out to her on the palm of your hand and she’ll peck them off, one at a time, and Bob’s Your Uncle. Unless she isn’t in the mood and turns her head away. Or she rapidly picks one and sends the other flying (Which one did she take? What am I looking for?) or sometimes she aims between the pills and sends both flying. You have to find them because you don’t want her to find them later, eat them, and overdose.

The Bartender does the meds sometimes.

The Bartender is a risk-taker. What if that pill goes flying outdoors? What then?

How tiny are these pills? The 3x a day med is a tiny pale yellow tablet, about 5mm or maybe 1/4″, but then split into quarters. It looks a lot like a small fragment of cracked corn, just like the ones that litter her bathtub floor. The other one is a chewable med, for small dogs. It’s a crumbly chubby oblong chew that tends to shatter when I split it into eighths. The fragment is pale brown like a tiny angular piece of chicken poop. I’m grateful that the pharmacy can now obtain this smaller tablet: it was hellish to split the big ones into sixteenths. Anyway, the eighths are tiny and blend into the debris littering the fleece lining her bathtub floor.

Where is that darned pill?

Princess used to be so lethargic that I didn’t feel bad about letting her nap in the bathtub all morning. Once I changed her to 3x day from 2x day, she started standing around, expectantly catching my eye, singing her crazy hen songs all day. Then my post-surgery routine landed me in the living room most of the day, so now Princess has a day pen out there. She’s closer to my motley indoor kitchen flock, she can see the bird feeders outside the window, and she can chortle, squawk, and whirr at us as we walk through “her” living room, scattering feathers.

Princess models her diaper.

Princess takes it all off.

I made her a Mickey Mouse chicken diaper from a pattern I found online. She’s too little for the fancy ones I can order from them. (I should probably try pigeon diapers, instead.) Well, she hated the diaper, and when she discovered the purple plastic elephant button fasteners, she had that diaper off faster than you can say Jack Robinson. Back to the drawing board. Or back to the ex-pen.

The weather is nice, the deck is repaired, and Princess gets to go outdoors.

For her afternoon pill, I have to lean over, folding my wretched hips and stretching to offer her the tiny yellow fragment. Then she dances and squeals, deciding whether or not to take it. My back starts to ache, my hips protest, and still she contemplates this life changing decision. I wander away to feed the cats and let the outdoor flock out for their afternoon garden party. When I return, she snatches up the pill and lets me carry her to the yard.

Princess disappears in the long grass under the apple tree. (Free rotten deck railing available. You haul.)

I don’t know why I bother. She ignores the other hens unless they peck at her, and the ducks and geese don’t exist. The squirrels are annoying and the small wild birds steal “her” food. She has her very own dustbath, though, and there are lots of bugs this summer. By 7pm, with more than two hours of daylight left, Princess is begging to come indoors. I plunk her into the bathtub, she hops up to the roost, and sashays to the side of the tub where she can spy on me as I negotiate the stairs. She’s waiting for her midnight meds.

Princess basks in the sun.

She stands and greets me every time I enter the bathroom, pass the door, or talk to The Bartender within earshot. Finally, I split her final meds and sit on the edge of the tub with her. Once more, she gobbles both meds, or maybe she sulks and then gobbles, or maybe she blitzes both and sends them flying. I can hear one hit the wall. The other seems to disappear or maybe she launched it into orbit because I never heard it hit the ground. Incredibly, I have almost always found the little rascals, and she does take it when I do. But now it’s time to brush my teeth.

The bathtub is to the left, and she likes to roost on the edge these days. Unless she jumps up to the forbidden sink.

Princess Fruitcake has decided that tooth brushing is loads of fun. I once had a budgie who would fly down the hall, make an abrupt turn, and land on my elbow while I was brushing. Pesky even learned to make the sh-sh-sh sound and bob up and down. It was very distracting, but cute. Having a chicken jump onto your elbow or shoulder while you are brushing is not. So, even though she is the center of the universe all day long, while I am brushing my teeth, I turn my back and aggressively ignore her. She prances and coos plaintively. Tonight she fell off the edge of the tub and inexplicably became tangled in my pants leg. I deposited her into the tub where she dramatically dropped onto her side and looked at me with indignation. I reached down and reset her into a more appropriate upright position and she proceeded to strut and cackle as I walked out the door.

Three years ago, and she hasn’t aged at all.

She was on the edge of the bathtub when I peeked in at bedtime. It would be a good night to sleep through with no nocturnal pit stops. I let The Bartender deal with her in the morning. I was outdoors at the time, but he tells me she was crowing like a rooster. For Pete’s sake, is that why she hasn’t laid any eggs?

 

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Hip Hip, Hooray?

I don’t like to read about other people’s medical issues, so I decided not to write about mine unless it was funny. There’s nothing funny about hip replacement surgery, though, and the next person who pipes up with “Well, I heard it was easier than a knee replacement!” is going to be sorry.

Monday night is cleanup time.

Danielle checks out the new help.

The Bartender feeds the ducks and chickens while I watch from indoors.

C’mon, Princess! Take your meds!

My son, Sam, came to stay for a month, and was put in charge of the indoor animals: the guinea pigs, a couple cage birds, the Dojo and some guppies. Of course, The Bartender got stuck with the geese, ducks, hens, pigeons, doves, rain and muck. He also got the Chicken in the Bathtub, and her thrice daily meds. Everybody has more respect for Guinea Pig Cage Cleaning Night now.

The Bartender prunes the grapevines while I point, shout, and enjoy the sweet scent of the apple blossoms.

Pre-surgery instructions meant no pain meds, no alcohol, and I wasn’t allowed to do anything that could result in an infection, such as pruning my roses. The Bartender pruned while I verbally described the branch and node to be cut. Without alcohol. A month later we would prune the grapes, with me standing on solid ground 15′ away, shouting instructions. I still can’t venture out to see what he did, but I do miss puttering around the garden. Being stuck indoors for 6 weeks, I now know that I am no candidate for an assisted living apartment. I will die in this house, surrounded by this landscaped oasis, and an assortment of poultry or worse.

At the hospital.

Nineteen icky staples.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You don’t want to hear about the blood thinners, the appliances, the nightmares, or any details of the surgery. But there have been some funny moments. Trying to help with dinner preparation one night, I fell asleep while chopping mushrooms. Not cool when you are on blood thinners. So I was banned from knives until I was off the rat poison. All the cooking was up to the men, and that included the Guinea Pig snacks, a mountain of chopped vegetables each night. Sam baked up a storm so there were always fresh cinnamon rolls and scones with the tea he brought me. My daughter Becky spent a weekend cooking up exotic eggplant dishes that provided a week of lunches.

Lemon scones

Cinnamon rolls

Guinea Pig salad

Takeout brought in

Seriously?

Sleep deprivation is the name of the game, and I am allowed to “sleep” only on one side. Somehow I manage to toss and turn all night in that singular position and I think that’s why my hair is broken. I look like Rod Stewart until I brush it out into a Phyllis Diller each morning. I’m afraid I am going to have to chop it all off, something I haven’t done since the 70’s. I looked like Little Orphan Annie until it grew out. I have been growing it out ever since. Asking for thoughts and prayers.

Lovely lilacs

It hasn’t been all bad. The lilacs and rhodies bloomed, indoors and out. After the blood thinners ended, I could finally spend cocktail hour out on the deck with Princess and Fat Bonnie. The birds are singing, the bees are buzzing, and the grass is growing. Take a last look at that raunchy deck. It’s currently under renovation so that I don’t accidentally step through a hole.

Princess takes a sun bath.

The Bartender’s famous Cosmopolitan.

Fat Bonnie, smack dab middle of the photo.

Mason Bee Inn: No Vacancy!

And so The Bartender is currently my Chauffeur, because I can’t drive, even while I can’t drink. We go out for Physical Therapy and blood draws (to verify to what extent the Coumadin is killing me). We even went to the dentist yesterday. Excuse me, not my dentist, my periodontist. That was a shock. My charming dentist, who once closed his office and brought everyone over to meet Dobby, would not have called that a “deep cleaning.” He would have called it a major excavation, and had I known, I would have waited another week, but it is done now, and we can start counting the weeks until Step Two, which will be discounted a cool $2k by my insurance because I subjected myself to Step One. (Let’s all push for universal health care, but don’t stop hollering until we get dental care, too, okay?)

Gidget the Capybara

And, speaking of dental work, I started a Go Fund Me for a capybara friend of mine. Little Gidget had to have her incisors removed, at a shocking cost to her owner. Capybaras are amazing animals, and Gidget is adapting nicely to grazing without her incisors. The health issues these guys can develop are unending, and veterinarians are so hard to find. The ROUS Foundation is doing what we can, but it’s hard to keep up!

Baby Archie fits inside the “Squirrel Proof” cage!

Archie is growing fast. Will he get stuck some day?

In other news, a baby squirrel has prematurely left his nest. Archie (just a coincidence) is about 3/4 size, and fits neatly inside the squirrel proof cages on my bird feeders. I generally don’t see babies until they are nearly full grown. You can’t even tell they are babies until you watch them drunkenly negotiate the fence-tops, and there’s not much hurtling from treetop to treetop. Because I can only see wildlife from the windows, I have been rigging up feeders outside the bigger windows. The hummingbirds love their new swings!

Big Boy and his dirty little feet.

I also picked up a new stray, this time a parakeet from a park about 3 miles west of here. He was perched on a railroad pedestrian overpass. I’d love to find his owner, but he’s welcome to stay here, dirty feet and all. His feet look like someone took footprints in an attempt to ID him. For now, I am calling him Big Boy, in honor of the recently restored Union Pacific steam engine.

Princess has moved to the living room during the day.

Princess demands attention.

I am finally selling Dobby’s swimming pool. It has been in storage long enough. Check it out here, and tell all your friends!

Daily Drama 77 – Get Out!

Yes, in fact Princess Blur is still living in my bathroom. She gets two different heart meds, three times a day, so it’s nice to have her conveniently located. At night we can hear the wheezing that is a symptom of her heart murmur. She hops up to her roost with ease, but has never in five months hopped out of the bathtub. The loose feathers redistribute when she flaps and I noticed recently that The Bartender has moved his toothbrush into another bathroom. She is well into her slumber when I go in to brush my teeth in the dark. I don’t want to disturb herby flipping on the lights.

Princess Blur evaluates the clean blanket prior to strategizing its fall from grace.

When I first brought her in, I toyed with the idea of making some chicken diapers, but I wasn’t that optimistic about her diagnosis. She hangs out with me as I work at my desk, but I am getting tired of washing unspeakably soiled fleece blankets. I guess diapers are my next project.

The latest hurdle was beak trimming. When you spend your days on fleece blankets instead of dirt, your beak will grow long and interfere with your bite so that it’s hard to take your meds. Trimming her beak was even less fun than it sounds, so the goal is not to ever have to do that again. Online, I learned that the common solution was to give her a brick. The Princess was almost as insulted by that brick as she was for the beak trimming itself! I took a walk around the house looking for a suitable brick substitute. If you have seen my house, it will come as no surprise to you that the perfect object was sitting on the same shelf where I put it in 2008 after I bought it in Mexico City. My pig-faced metate makes a perfect seed dish for Princess, and with any luck it will wear down her beak as she digs through for the sunflower seeds.

Samantha, looking perky at the prospect of an afternoon out of the infirmary.

And yes, Samantha, my Little Dead Hen, is still out in the infirmary, getting meds once every five days. An impossible regimen but it’s on my calendar and I usually remember. The lymphoma is ever-so-slowly taking her down, and she is painfully thin. She wants to be out with the flock, but she is so frail she falls over at the slightest breeze. And then can’t get up. In the infirmary, her food and water is efficiently located, she has a heated pad, and she can see and hear everyone, day and night.

She cries for me in the morning when I deliver her breakfast: a little dish of rice, pancakes, or her new favorite: corn muffins. She also gets yogurt, cottage cheese, scrambled or hard boiled egg sprinkled with probiotic powder. Topped off with frozen corn or peas, maybe some fruit. She eats less and less of it, to the delight of my hen Angel, who hops up for first dibs on yesterday’s leftovers. Still, Samantha looks forward to her breakfast every morning, and digs right in.

Samantha and Princess enjoy an afternoon snack together.

Suddenly, our late-season snow melted, the ice thawed, and the sun came out. When the flock invades the back yard for the afternoon Garden Party, Samantha takes over a small corner of Dobby’s old pen. She has a heat lamp, food and water, and nobody can bump into her. When it warms up nicely, I even bring out Princess. They are both lonely but essentially bedridden and they have fun chatting and sitting in their rocking chairs together. We’re still going to have wet and chilly spring weather, and I will have to decide every day whether it is worth the risk to put them out. I will be rearranging the furniture out there so they have access to a larger covered area, and I can add another heat lamp if they use it.

Coffee Bean, Windy, and Angel are shocked to discover that Princess has magically reappeared. They hadn’t seen her for months.

I also have a little dove who commutes. It seems like every winter there is one who has a tough time and ends up on the ground. They came in as an established flock in 2008, so none are younger than eleven years old, and most are much older. Anyway, this little bird went into a heated cage in the barn before the snow, but she still isn’t flying much. Putting her straight back out with the flock was not successful, so I have fixed up a transitional cage out there for her. She first spent days there, returning to the barn at night. When it warmed up, she spent the nights in the outside cage. Finally, I have started letting her out during the day, and the flock is more accepting, though she still can’t fly very high. She’s trying harder now, so even though I am still caging her at night, I think she’ll soon be flying back up to the high perches.

Doves in a cage looking at a dove in a cage.

So now I have two hens going out to the backyard every afternoon, and a dove commuting between her flock and a night cage every day. Who else has cabin fever?

Fat Bonnie is bored.

How about Fat Bonnie? She used to join the Garden Party every afternoon. After she picked up three botfly larvae that had to be $urgically removed, I swore she would never see the outdoors again. That was several years ago, when the rat situation had reached epic proportions. The risk is much smaller now. So out she goes. 

Fat Bonnie, eating again, of course.

The Graveyard used to be her favorite place in the yard, and now it is conveniently fenced. This means that when it is time to take her indoors, I need only chase her around The Graveyard instead of the entire yard and aviary. Lucky me.

At dusk, send your thoughts and prayers to me as I herd the flock back into the aviary (and flush out the freeloading wild mallards), carry Samantha back to the infirmary, return the dove to her night cage, lift old Coffee Bean up to her favorite roost (Didn’t I mention that spoiled hen earlier?), bring Princess indoors, take a breath, and chase Bonnie until she allows me to lift her up and toss transfer her back into the kitchen. Then Princess gets her meds, and I am grateful to have a bartender on staff.

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Gratuitous Dobby photo:

Peek-a-boo!

This invasion took place during a Garden Party, long ago. This is the rabbit palace, but they are out in the yard. A couple of hens and a marauding capybara have taken up residence.

Daily Drama 76 – Snow at the Not-So-Funny Farm

Snow is beautiful, isn’t it? It was so fun to look out the front door and see bountiful snow: fluffy clean snow, looking like Crisco. It’s so quiet. I forgot about that part. You see, Seattle doesn’t get much snow. Not enough to justify snow plows or snow tires, so everybody takes the day off to enjoy the magnificence of it.

This was my front steps.

I got out my snow ruler: nine inches! (23cm) And started to watch the weather forecasts like a fiend. More snow? Freezing temperatures, too? Uh oh. I started to bring in the hummingbird feeders after dusk. Get up at dawn, throw on my flimsy robe, hang them back up, hummers buzzing at the empty hanger, as if to remind me where the feeder belongs.

My official snow ruler

The back yard wild mallards landed in the Crisco snow, rapidly sinking in up to their necks, trudging back up to the surface, flying back up to the roof. Over and over. So funny! I could be mean and toss their ration of cracked corn into the deep snow, but that would be wasteful.

View from the living room. You have to imagine the thunk! thunk! of the ducks landing on the roof.

They quickly learned that the wild bird buffet was being served on the deck, right outside the kitchen door, in dishes. They had the area trampled flat in no time. There are at least forty-two of them, after all. The original pair have been here daily for a dozen years, rain or shine.

Yes, in fact some of them do knock on the door.

Dobby would have been sequestered in the kitchen for two weeks by now. There’s still about six inches of snow on the ground. The bare patches are thawing and we’re supposed to have more rain before the temperatures drop again in a couple days and they start bragging about more snow. The Prince would have been perfectly miserable, cabin fever in spades. This is one of the many reasons why I am not considering getting another capybara. Our mild marine climate is no longer to be trusted.

The Graveyard at Stacy’s Funny Farm

The graveyard‘s colors are muted, and the sun can’t illuminate the gems hanging from the arbor. The snow is so pretty, even the Dove dome is a masterpiece. That snowball in the foreground is a “Dogloo” turned igloo. The pigeon loft is behind it, and this morning I decided to take the eggs away from Phoenix and Cor-ten. Birth control is so easy for birds, imagine if we could lay an egg and simply walk away from it! Today there was a tiny fuzzy face looking out at me. I was too late. So they have a baby and I guess congratulations are in order.

The dove cage has never looked prettier.

When the snow first falls, the cats test it. Curiosity satisfied, Kitty Hawk rejoins his smarter half in the barn. The hens are smart enough to hunker down in the barn until it goes away. The ducks and geese have fancy feet and don’t mind the cold.

Goose and cat. Kitty Hawk is some kind of fool.

Well, they don’t mind it too much. Norman isn’t looking particularly happy here. It complicates his job as flock manager.

Gentle Norman. He didn’t sign up for this.

Even when there is snow, the ducks and geese prefer to sleep under the stars. In the morning, I can see where each one slept by the thawed  dirt ovals they create with their downy blankets. They pull their feet up inside the feathers, tuck in their bills, and they’re good for the night. In the photo below, you can see two ducks sleeping on the ground, and to the left, two thawed ovals where their friends slept the night before.

Tony and Vinny, snoozing midday. They are in the middle of the photo.

In the photo below, you can see the aviary netting is starting to sag under the weight of the snow. Look at the top rail of the fence, straight and true. The roof netting should be uniformly higher than that top rail, but you can see a droop near the center of the photo.

Observing the aviary from the kitchen deck after the first onslaught of snow

From inside the aviary it looked like this. I tried to smack at the snow from below, to get it to drop off the netting, but it was so light and fluffy it wouldn’t fall through the big holes of the 2″ chicken wire. Seattle snow usually falls straight through to the ground. Only deep dry snow falling quickly onto the thin frozen wires will cause significant accumulation. Even so, our usual quick return to 40 degree weather melts it away.

Crisco everywhere: above, below, even on the vertical wire fence

We had deep fry dry snow, frozen temperatures, and frigid nights. Most of the hens sleep in the barn on heated pads. Adelita still prefers her roost, next to where Conchita and Jello used to sleep. The geese and ducks still preferred the frozen ground to the cozy barn.

Three fat hens, Eartha, Windy, and Frieda, have taken over the cat area, and I think they even snitch some cat food when I’m not looking.

Coffee Bean is a heavy old girl, and I lift her up to this cat carrier at night. Her friend, Angel, flies up to the top.

Samantha is in the infirmary (she has Lymphoma) but she is right next door to Angel, and I hear them chatting as I walk away.

Adelita dreams she is still roosting with her friends, but she’s all alone up there, now. In this old photo, Princess is still in the infirmary. She’s indoors in my bathroom now, of course.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we got a couple more inches of snow. The net is relaxing under the weight of it. The duck pond is frozen. Beyond the fence, wild mallards gather the troops, ready to beg for cracked corn as I pass by for inspection.

Beyond the pond and fence, wild mallards accumulate with the snow.

The heat lamps come out and the Muscovy ducks come in. They are a South American breed and not as hardy as my other domestics. Their feet and caruncle can get frostbite and they love the heat lamps. The shavings in the barn don’t seem to freeze as long as they are dry, but like a fool, I provide drinking water in the barn during freezing weather and the ducks take care of the “dry” problem. It’s still nicer than the pile-up of snow outside.

新年快樂

The perennial Chinese New Year’s decorations are suddenly timely. Last night the barn lights didn’t come on at dusk. D’oh! They are on a timer and we had a six hour power outage. They have probably been cycling on in the middle of the night for the past week.

Her drinking water never froze.

About a week before the storm, I brought this little dove into the barn. She wasn’t flying up to the perches, and so I fixed her up with a cage that has a perch on the ground. Usually a week or so of R&R perks them up, but I’m also glad she wasn’t in the big dome during the storm. She’s cooing to her buddies in the dome so they all know she’s okay.

We had more snow, and the sagging over the duck pond became more noticeable.

Then it rained and all the snow absorbed water like a sponge.

The seams in the netting ripped and it fell into the pond.

Then it froze into a bolus of twigs and ice.

After all the snow, everyone was excited to finally see rain. It is Seattle, after all. It rained all night. In the morning, I was surprised to see robins gaily hopping in and out of the aviary. They are too big to get through the aviary netting, so that meant they had found a hole. It turned out to be a hole the size of a Mack truck. Several of them, in fact.

Coffee Bean and Grover learned to share this heated carrier.

Meanwhile, everyone became used to moving into the barn every night. When I gave the signal, Norman would march everyone in. When the netting collapsed, I realized the cats would be able to walk right out, so I locked them into the smaller portion of the barn during the day. Norman’s non-flighted flock would be okay waddling around in the wrecked aviary during the day while we worked on repairs.

Doesn’t it kind of look like they are gathered around a campfire, telling ghost stories?

The Muscovies like to perch up high, and found the hen nest boxes. I think Bev is thinking about laying, because she has been getting in and knocking all the clean bedding out onto the ground.

Not only did the aviary netting seams rip open, each of the support posts poked a hole. The important central support was a tree that had died and was now rotten enough to splinter into several spongy logs. The central support cables tightly gripped the one remaining sound portion of the tree which was now dangling a few inches above the ground. We removed the other supports so that the netting would be easy to reach and repair.

It’s an eye test: can you see the pink flagging?

I built my first aviary in 1984 out of recycled fishing nets. Holes would rot out of it, unpredictably. The second one, in 1988, was smaller and I used Toprite aviary netting. Squirrels chewed it where it attached to the fence. I used sturdier Toprite for my third aviary, in 1991. It was an effective net, but the small holes clogged with snow quickly, necessitating hourly snow removal during the storms. A fallen fir tree once took the entire net out, ripping it to shreds. This 2001 aviary “roof” has a chew-proof stiff wire mesh edge with a 2″ chicken wire infill. For eighteen years, the snow has fallen through the netting, except where it is covered with twigs and autumn leaves. A yearly cleaning was all it took. Until Snowpocalypse.

No aviary repair kit is complete without a thousand zip ties.

I have a bartender on staff, and his job description is a moving target. I flagged all the holes with bright pink survey flagging. Where I could reach, we worked together to zip tie the holes. Then he went out the next day, like John Henry, and zipped the rest of those suckers right up. They didn’t have a chance.

Eye Test #2: Can you see the zip ties?

We put the supports back up, and Bob’s your uncle! Everything’s back to normal, and Norman can take a break. Sure, there’s still six inches of dirty ice encrusted compact snow on the ground, but I’m fairly certain it will go away. Someday.

Then I walked out to look at the still pretty clean snow in the front yard, and discovered that the core of my multi-trunked Flame Amur Maple had shattered. All of the branches have splayed out and collapsed to the ground as if a malevolent giant stomped on it. Oy vey, how is The Bartender going to fix that?

Miss Emmylou Harris, Those Memories of You

Miss Emmylou (Harris) came to us in June of 2018. She and Bonnie (Raitt) were the last remaining hens in a small, aging backyard flock. The night before Emmylou moved in, hen-sister Bonnie Raitt passed away. It was a good time to transition lonely Emmylou into a new home. The weather was pleasant, the aviary mud had dried into scratch-able dirt.

“Pecking order” is a very real activity in the henhouse, and introducing a new hen takes care and time. I isolated Emmylou in the “Bully Pen” where she could observe her new flock from the secure side of a sturdy fence. She had her own food, water, and shelter and adjusted quickly.

Emmylou was one of my prettiest hens. One of the most curious, too.

Her owner inquired after a couple days and I reported the following:

“Emmylou is very content. She’s enthusiastic about the treats and has found a nice place to roost in the barn*. She hasn’t yet had contact with my hens but they aren’t too concerned about her so I should be able to introduce them- supervised- soon. Usually, one of mine will take an interest in the newcomer and I’ll put them together so Emmylou will have an established friend. I’ll keep you posted. I’ll be writing a blog this week, and she’ll get a mention there. I’ll send a link when it’s published.”

*An isolated barn area, away from the main roosting area

While waiting for their turn at the treat dish, Conchita and Adelita check out the new hen on the far side of the bully pen fence.

Emmylou was an Orpington. My previous Orpingtons have been buff, a buttery yellow color, so I was surprised to welcome another “brown” hen to the flock. Still, she was a beautiful not-quite-brown hen, colors grading from yellow to gray. She had that friendly, confident Orpington personality, though, and was eager to explore the entire aviary.

Seven brown hens gather for treats. Emmylou was eager to join the club.

Emmylou was never intimidated by my flock. Norman is big and loud, but he is a sweet and gentle gander. He checked out the new hen and never challenged her entrance into his territory. My favorite introductory trick is to serve up the treats on both sides of the fence so they have to approach each other to eat as a flock. As I watch their interactions, I can usually spot a “friend” and will put the friend in the bully pen with the newcomer. Then when they enter the flock they have someone to show them around.

Emmylou pauses atop the bully pen as she jumps over.

Emmylou had her own idea. On about the third day, she hopped onto the fence and then over into the flock. Everyone ignored her, except for Conchita, my boss hen. Conchita had recovered from her broken leg and had reassumed her position at the top of the pecking order. They had a couple of quick tussles and Emmylou conceded. All the other hens were satisfied with Emmylou as Number Two hen. I have never seen a new hen adjust so quickly. She got along with everyone. It’s a good thing, because there was no way I could keep her from jumping over the bully pen fence.

Frieda shows Emmylou around the barn.

Emmylou checked out the food, water, and the best dust bath spots. She would hang out with one little group of hens, and then another. She was very active, one of my more athletic hens, for sure.

Every time I look at that ladder, now, I expect to see her on top of it. Maybe I could crochet a hen and put her up there for good.

Roosting is a prime indicator of pecking order. The boss hen takes the primo location and decides if she’ll share it. The three fat hens roost in a heap on top of an old cage, though Windy now prefers the ground. Conchita and her sister roosted on a branch hanging right smack dab in the middle of the barn. Newcomers Angel and Coffee Bean kicked out the cats and roost on/in their heated cat carrier. They’re not fools. Princess was “over there” until she came indoors. Samantha hunkers down on her heated pad, safely locked up in the infirmary. Miss Emmylou? She chose the tip top of the ladder above the three fat girls, a fantastic location overlooked by all. Emmylou was probably the only one able to get up there.

I didn’t accidentally write this post in the past tense. One day, Emmylou was dead. Not the “pretend dead” like Samantha, who was subsequently diagnosed with Lymphoma, but the final irreversible variety of dead. I was crushed, but there was nothing to be done. If there was something to see or do, I would have done it, but sometimes the Grim Reaper is swift and sure.

The Graveyard at Stacy’s Funny Farm