Corralling the dinosaurs
posted in Illnesses, Livestock and Pets, Volcano, Weather |This morning, OmegaDad and I girded up our loins (figuratively speaking), and hauled Angie back out to the chicken coop after weeks in the garage recuperating from her last experience of being returned to the coop, whereupon Some Unknown Monstrous Chicken took it upon herself to beat Angie into bloody bits of ground beef. Fearing a reoccurrence of the same, OmegaDad and I spent an hour leaning on the walls of the chicken coop and snatching up Some Unknown Monstrous Chicken, who turned out to be Comet (the bitch).
I have decided that chickens are visible evidence of evolution, obviously having evolved from dinosaurs. Carnivorous dinosaurs. Velociraptor type dinosaurs. Lean, mean, fighting machines. That like blood.
(Cue zombie sound: ::Blooooood::)
What was happening was a disruption of avian psychodynamics. New hen in the coop (okay, okay, so she’s not “new”, but it’s been weeks, and she seemed new) means establishing a new pecking order.
In general, establishing the pecking order means that dominant bird pecks at lower-status bird, lower-status bird squawks, lowers herself in a submissive posture, and then runs like hell away from the pecking bird. A quick flurry, and all is over and done with, no harm, no foul, especially no blood.
But Comet’s a chicken bitch. And Angie’s stubborn.
Within minutes of Angie being reintroduced to the coop, Comet had drawn blood on Angie’s feet.
Then comes the creepy part: Comet and Winnie spent the next hour wandering around very carefully hunting down and eating every single speck of blood they could find. With sinuous and sinister darting heads with beady eyes looking sidelong at Angie, calculating when she was looking away, so that more pecking could be done.
Okay, it was mostly Comet doing this action. Winnie was alternately pecking at chicken feed, hunting down a few bloody spots of chicken fluff, and running away from Angie’s desultory I-have-more-status-then-you pecks.
Comet was out for blood. Literally. Comet was looking for a violent confrontation. Comet was trying to provoke a violent confrontation.
And Angie wasn’t backing down. She wasn’t fighting back, but she wasn’t backing down. Comet would dart in and peck at her then fluff up and posture and threaten, and Angie would put her head down, but she wouldn’t assume the submissive pose (crouching down parallel to floor); her body and tail were still up. This kind of reminded me of a kid stubbornly refusing to do chores and being sullen: You can’t make me! read her body language. Which, of course, drove Comet even more into a frenzy.
So we finally gave in and removed Comet from the coop.
Lo and behold, hours later, no bloody Angie, no bloody Winnie, two eggs laid.
We will attempt reintroducing Comet to the coop in a few days. If that doesn’t work, we’ll farm Comet out; we like Angie better (Comet is a bitch).
Other than that…The volcano blew big time on Saturday, dumping lots of ash on Homer (check out some of the pics!), southwards. Saturday was a glorious, sunny day, and everything was melting, with lots of rivulets and streams of water pouring out from under slabs of packed snow. I took the dawg for a walk and had a lovely time; I meant to do it today, as well, but then I got struck with either pleurisy or costochondroitis or (crossing my fingers and knocking on wood that it isn’t this one) pericarditis and spent the afternoon dreading every deep breath I took. Bleah.
In a few more days, I hit a birthday, a big one.
