OmegaMom

(First off, I think Fluff had, indeed, bonked her head while riding in the box; she’s been walking and clucking up a storm today.  Looks like Marek’s Disease was a false alarm.  Whew!  As for the crossed beak, the vet recommends a Dreml tool.  Yes.)

Shortly before my mom left Alaska to return to warmer and sunnier climes, we noticed a few yellow leaves in the birch trees beside the kitchen porch.  Remember, this was around August 15.

I scoffed at yellow leaves.  Hey!  It’s August, I said to myself.  OmegaDad sagely pointed out that the clumps of yellow leaves we were seeing on some trees here and there must be insect damage.

The thing was…the number of yellow leaves kept increasing, slowly but surely.

At the same time, we noticed it was becoming dark at night.  Like, actual, can’t-see-in-it darkness.  No more of the continual twilight gloaming.

This week, various blogs and parenting sites have been all about returning to school, and how this means fall is on the way!

I look outside and have to admit, somewhat sadly, that fall, in all it’s glory, has arrived in Alaska; in fact, it arrived a week or so ago.  That would be–in case you can’t recall–before September.  The temperature is hovering around the same levels it was while GrannyJ was here, but the winds have started coming down the mountains, so it feels very different.  The leaves on the trees–those yellowing leaves–have suddenly become crispy, and the sound of the wind in the trees is distinctly different.  There’s a rustling and a rattling that wasn’t there a month ago.  And with every small gust, leaves patter down, slipping this way and that through the air before they settle gently on the grass.

The path of the sun has shifted noticeably in the sky.  Of course, this vivid shift in the lighting shows up everywhere I’ve lived in the fall, and I always notice it suddenly one day as it proclaims, Yes!  Autumn is here!  But right now, the sun is at its zenith at 35 degrees at 1 p.m.; my subconscious, having grown up in Chicago, tells me that this kind of light is most often seen in mid-October.  So my body thinks it’s mid-October already.

The sun is coming up at 7 a.m. tomorrow.  It’s setting at 8:58 p.m. tonight.  We’re losing almost six minutes per day; in twenty days, come the equinox, the sun will be rising at 7:45 a.m. and setting at 7:57 p.m.

In a month, I will be walking the dotter off to the school bus stop in the dawn light at a quarter to nine.

It changes so very quickly up here. 

Or, rather, let’s talk chickens.

Chickens:  the psychodynamics of chicken flocks.

Chickens:  Why Comet lays more eggs than Angie, who lays more eggs than any of the other chickens, who don’t seem to be laying yet at all.

Chickens:  Why Comet is a bitch.

OmegaDad has a soft spot for Comet; he thinks she’s spunky.  We all think she’s smart.  I think she’s a bitch.  OmegaDad scoffs, saying that his sweet Comet could never be bitchy and it’s all in my imagination.

I guess Angie’s pecked-to-a-fare-thee-well-hind-feathers are all in my imagination, too.

But now…now, I have scientific proof that Comet is a bitch.  Because it just so happens that being a good egg-layer is often coupled with…ta-da!…being at the top of the pecking order.  In other words, being a bitch.

I swear I read it today at ScienceBlogs, but I can no longer find the reference.  However, David Sloan Wilson’s latest book, “Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives“, has a section that specifically talks about an experiment performed by William Muir, a poultry scientist.  Muir bred chickens two ways, looking for better egg-layers; in one method, he specifically bred using hens who were “productive” egg-layers, and in the other, he bred all the hens in “productive cages” (i.e., cages where the overall average egg-laying was good).  Lo and behold, after six generations…

There were only three hens, not nine, because the other six hens had been murdered. The three survivors had plucked each other during their incessant attacks and were now nearly featherless. Egg production plummeted during the course of the experiment, even though the most productive individuals had been selected each and every generation. What happened? The most productive individuals had achieved their success by suppressing the productivity of their cagemates. Bill [the poultry scientist] had selected the meanest hens in each cage and after six generations had produced a nation of psychopaths.

There you have it:  scientific proof that Comet, who lays an egg a day (really!) is a chicken psychopath.

Of course, Angie, who is laying an egg every five or six days, it seems, often comes across as second in the pecking order:  she pecks the others.  But, since she’s second, Comet reserves a special meanness just for her.

Comet also has become a pushy broad who pokes and pecks at everything, jumps up in my lap when I’m trying to feed Angie from my hand, and attacks my toes if I don’t have food for her.  This is Angie, who will snuggle up in my lap, settle down, and start “purring” (kind of a low, gurgling coo).

In other, less amusing, chicken news, one of our two beautiful silkies has a crossed beak.  This means she’s ending up smaller and lighter than her sister.  This means we finally decided to take her to the vet.  So I ended up having to box her up and spend 20 minutes clucking incessantly to a frantic hen who was dashing herself against the box sides whenever I had to stop or turn the car.  I took her to OmegaDad’s office so he could take her to her vet appointment; I had to be back at home to pick up the dotter at the bus stop, feed her a healthy snack, oversee the homework, and take her off to gymnastics.

When we returned, OmegaDad had Fluff quarantined in the downstairs bathtub (the cats and their accoutrements were kicked out and the door closed), in fear of Marek’s disease, a highly contagious viral cancer that strikes chickens when they are around four or five months old.  It seems that the vet was extremely concerned because Fluff suddenly can’t walk.

I’m hoping it’s because Fluff kept bashing against the box.  I have become too attached to the chickens, and find the egg laying to be somewhat of a treasure hunt…It would suck royally to have our little flock of very individualistic birds be laid waste by a virus.