Thursday, May 19, 2005

In-n-Out Chicken

Scout is getting noisier and noisier. His crow is now two syllables and louder. I wish I could post a sound file here so you could hear. Maybe I'll try to figure out how to do that.

And while he does crow at random times throughout the day, he seems to do it particularly when he thinks I'm ignoring him and want attention. Many times, I've been near him and walked away, and he crows. I walk back to him and he runs over to my feet and pecks and clucks a little. I walk away again - crow.

He's a weird dude.

Scratch, meanwhile, has been pretty quiet lately. Maybe she's embarrased that her brother is being so obnoxious.

As for me, summer school has begun, and my house is slowly getting more and more stained with the blemishes of chicken housing. Even though I continually clean up after them, inevitably some stains are left in rugs and furniture. It's not a big deal though; most of my stuff here isn't too fancy.

The mess was particularly bad after a couple of one-night trips last week (New Orleans & Nashville). The chickens had the run of most of the house for over 30 hours at a time while I was gone, and it showed.

Fortunately, they are now big enough to stay outside all day with little supervision. I put them out in the morning, they live as yard chickens all day, and I bring them in at night to hang out with me. I do this because the risk of neighborhood predators is still there, and I haven't built them a little house to roost in at night. I would love to do so, but since I'm gonna have to take them back to the fam in about a month, it seems pointless to put a lot of time and effort into a chickenhouse that won't get much use.

Luckily they love being in at night just as much as they love being out all day. All I have to do is open the door, and they walk right in. After pecking around for awhile, they usually come to me to perch on an arm or a leg.

I need to eat now.

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