CHICKENS

Mid-December we go chook-hunting, and wrangle us up one little baby chick - couldn't have been more than a few days old. We set him up in an old drawer with some bedding, a hot water bottle, and some water and grains. He's a noisy for a little fella, peeing an awful lot. He seems to get cold pretty easy, which makes sense since he's all fluff and no feathers. We take him on a few field trips to the office, where he assists in neck warming and computer drafting. As his wing feathers start to come in, he's gets a little more adventurous, and spending more time outside, investigating some loose string...

A few weeks later we come across another little chook, and bring home George a little sister. Her chest bone is all wonky, so she becomes our little Chester. She's pretty skittish after her relocation, but quickly learns the ropes from her (slightly younger, but more domesticated) adopted bro. They seem to get along, and share their oatmeal and roosting space together. After a month or so they grow out of their drawer, and we put them in a slatted armoire in the front porch, with frequent trips indoors to keep us company in the kitchen. Our legs and arms are often their jungle-gym, roosting, and napping spots. Potted plants become sites for dirt baths. They even help us ring in the New Year, and Chester and I share a festive pseudokiss.

They keep on getting bigger, and we notice George's comb is getting redder. We (at this point) don't know if we have hens, roosters, or one of each. George generally seems more vigilant, less skittish, and more vocal. Find out that one definite character is roosters have spurs on their legs, and we can see little nubbins of spurs starting to grow on George's "ankles," but not Chester's. And then we hear George cock-a-doodle in the morning. They still spend extended field trips in the house, chilling in the front room, and getting their mugshots taken in the kitchen.

We whistle when we feed them, and they'll come running to us on command. They're getting a bit big for their quarters on our front porch, so we decide to relocate them to the communal coop in the backyard, already occupied by 4 full grown hens. Upon arrival, Chester starts taking a dirt bath, and George cruises the area. The top of the pecking order, a large white hen, struts up to George, and he waits for her to approach. She greets him by promptly jumping on his face, to which he responds by squawking and repeatedly running into the coop fencing. Welcome to the real world, Georgie! Two days later George and Chester break out (literally fly the coop) and we see them walking around the backyard, and at one point spy Chester on the roof outside our bedroom window. We whistle, they come, and we give them some kitchen scraps. Back onto the front porch they go.

After a few more weeks of growing, we put them back in the coop. This time George seems a bit more wary of his coop-mates, and both seem to respect the pecking order. This time, George and Chester seem to share their secret of escape, as all the chickens let themselves out. Fortunately, the whole crew hangs around the backyard and in the adjoining jungle, and George and Chester still respond to our whistle, running to the back door to get their share of scraps.

We invite them inside every once in a while.

Sometimes they even seem to beg outside the back door

The other chooks continue to learn from George and Chester, and soon are coming to our back door as well, often lining up on the retaining wall in the back.

George really seems to be coming into his 'roosteroscity' as he's working his way up the pecking order, now eating side-by-side with the top hens, and even starting to push Chester around a bit. And then one day hanging laundry, I see George mounting one of the hens under the neighbor's trampoline. Oh, they grow up so fast.