It wasn't a bad day yesterday (for me) until after the Beast went to church. When he does that, it's my job to put the chickens away for the night. No problem, right? I mean, most nights lately they've been putting themselves away. But it was different last night.
It SEEMED normal when I went out to check for eggs, feed them their corn *treat* and count them before I closed and locked the coop. They were all (I thought) in the coop except for the one that followed me in. As soon as they saw me, wham!, they ran out into the coop yard in eager anticipation. I gathered the six eggs laid for the day, scooped up the corn to scatter and went outside to count them before I locked up. That's when I got a bit scared. I only counted 7, including Freddy! It should have been 8!
I grabbed the flashlight and checked the barn (some of it is dark enough for a mostly black chicken to hide). No chickens in there! I counted the chickens at least two more times before I accepted the fact that one was missing. I panicked and, with the flashlight, checked under the deck, under the solar panels stand, all around the cottage. I walked behind the barn and checked the area between the barn and the fence. Still no chicken. I then walked along the fence that separates our property and the neighbors behind us, shining the light into the dark area of the bushes. No chicken.
I went out front, thinking it might have been the chicken that has been known to fly out of the coop on a few occasion. I thought maybe it flew over the fence and out front (it's been found out there twice already) but, no! no trace of it. I then walked around the house to our other property, did a quick perimeter walk and, all this time, I listened for any chicken noises......none. Now I was really upset and scared for the poor chicken. Each time she had *escaped*, she was always nervous and making these weird clucking noises until she was safely back in the coop. Unless someone had been able to sneak in our yard and kidnap a chicken (for dinner, perhaps?), she now was the only suspect.
I finally gave up searching (my hips were really hurting by this time) and I didn't look forward to telling this to the Beast. I felt like *I* had lost her. When he got home, I just told him, flat out. As he got undressed from his church clothes and put on his jeans, he grabbed the flashlight and went out to the coop to check for himself. I told you that he never believes me...so wasn't a surprise to me.
What WAS shocking was that all 8 were in the coop when he checked! I couldn't believe it. Their whole coop area is not huge, including the barn. Where in the hell did the one chicken hide? Did it fly up and in? I know they CAN fly, usually when they are scared or particularly curious or when the wind catches them in a storm. What the heck did this mean? The Beast just laughed at my confusion and said that he had the same thing happen to him a couple times and, what he discovered, was that sometimes two hens will be so close together that they just look like one fat hen. Okay, I can dig that because I had seen that myself.
It just never occurred to me at the time to stand there and wait to make sure I was really seeing them all or was I just counting the heads that were UP. Oh well.
Time to post this. Love you all. ***Hugs***
ATT'N: THIS POST WAS FOR A WEEK AGO ON TUESDAY. IT WAS TURNED INTO A DRAFT INSTEAD OF IT BEING PUBLISHED. JUST F.Y.I.
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