Pontchartrain #4 is the chicken who couldn't be tamed. No matter how many hours I spend tiptoeing to catch it, snatching it up in one quick movement followed by gentle petting and complements in a soft voice, it won't have it. Each time it catches a glimpse of me coming toward the yard, this thing runs in utter terror with a type of bounce easiest pictured while imagining a galloping ostrich. It's a tall-standing rhythmic yet nerdy-looking escape with its neck craning neck following the inertia of its burst from stillness to max speed. A poor egg-layer at best, this one is nothing short of a pain in the rear most days but does provide some comic relief and welcome entertainment.
Today, Jerome and I went to a vegan potluck....
Lemon pudding:
1 whole lemon,1 lemon w/o peel,2 avocados, soaked dates, pineapple juice for sweetening.
Kale Chips: Miso, garlic, shallots, Braggs, lemon juice in blender or food processor, coat raw kale and dehydrate from 4-6 hours on waxed paper in dehydrator, turning 1/2 way through
Horchata Popcicles (make horchata and freeze)
....and I returned home between 10:30 and 11:00 to find that the door to my coop had somehow closed with only two of the chickens inside.The rest were snoozing against the outside wall of the coop or found random nooks and crannies in the yard which made for an interesting late-night chicken retrieval mission by the light of the moon...and less romantically, my blackberry screen.
This night, I discovered how very endearing it is to have even the bat-out-of-hell chicken listlessly flopping in my arms as I stumbled to the coop over the empty plastic flower pots, garden tools and whatever else. I immediately was taken back to a time when I was small enough to tote up the stairs after a long night of popcorn and Gremlins. Not even bothering to hop onto the perch, it flopped down where I set it on the floor of the coop. Pulling me out of my nostalgia, I then began to wonder if it were dead. Checking for breathing, I concluded it was just a tuckered out piece of poultry and continued to escort the others inside. Most were also too tired to move and others reacted as though I were a bear and my arms were its clenching jaws of doom. I couldn't reason with them and transported them as fast as physically possible, suffering only minor surface abrasions.
The new chicks are snoozing in their Tupperware container (pictures tomorrow?), the medium-sized chicks are huddled in the corner of their compost bin-turned impromptu coop and the bigguns are sprawled out summer-style on the coop floor in positions that would concern me if I hadn't put them there myself. It is, indeed time for bed.
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