Chick Tracks

"We missed you at church last night," the pastor spoke over the phone.  "Were you ill?" 

"No," I said, "Howard just had to get the ox out of the ditch."  More accurately, it was getting the chicken out of the coop!  My husband recently indulged his longing to have chickens when our "egg lady," who brought us a treasured dozen every Wednesday church night, told him that her sources had dried up.  Her supplier was getting rid of  her 28 hens.

My thrifty husband's ears perked up when she said the owner was willing to let them go for $5 each.  "I'll take them!" he exclaimed, barely suppressing his excitement (and without even asking me)!  Just then another church friend, overhearing the conversation, said eagerly, "I'll take any you don't want."  So, thinking of his wallet, I imagine, he decided he would take ten, with an eye to putting them on our son's newly purchased country property.

Accommodations would have to be provided for them there, though, so they would "layover" (no pun intended) in rabbit cages in our back yard vacated by previous objects of his enthusiasm, grown cold.  The initial transfer went smoothly, under cover of darkness, since the covert operation had to wait until the chickens went to roost.  (Nice that our neighbors couldn't see, too!)  While Howard  was feeding these prizes the next day, however, two super-hens flew the coop, flapping past him and sailing over the fenced enclosure. Thankfully, they were rounded up with the help of an eager pooch borrowed from our granddaughter.

Our son had prepared the chicken house, and yesterday was the only day they could be delivered. We didn't expect it to take all afternoon, but it turned out to be a day fraught with drama, suspense and "fowl" play.  I was drafted as a helper, and armed with his longsleeve flannel shirt to protect my arms and oversized gloves supplied by my husband,  I was stationed as a guard while he opened the cage.  Those wily birds proved very elusive, so I was dispatched to the house for a wire clothes hanger.  After a heated discussion about the size of the hook (I remembered how Mama used to catch chickens, but he had his own recollections), we tossed the clothes hanger idea.  I would stand at one end of the cage and shoo them to the other end where Howard was waiting.  This was working, but too slowly.

Finally resorting to grabbing a clawing drumstick myself, I caught one, then another prey, but two managed to escape over the fence.  Howard went to get our granddog again, who by this time was overly enthusiastic, resulting in a casualty, or maybe two.  It was hard to count them in their feathered jumble.  The neighbors found the whole thing highly amusing and joined the search for the escaped fowl. It was with our own ruffled feathers that we finally had all 12 ( including the ones the seller had thrown in as a bonus) in their cages and on the way to their new digs, a refigured playhouse with nesting boxes and roosting rails added.

I breathed a sigh of relief and prayed for their safety when we left for the night.  Today we went out to paint the hen house, finding them safe and sound, contentedly singing their off-key chicken warble and scratching happily in the dirt of their pen.  Counting them, I couldn't believe there were 13!  Repeated countings came up with the same number!  One chicken must have only fainted and hidden among the rest!  At any rate, we had missed church, and when our pastor called this morning, I knew our chickens had come home to roost!