The Squirrel and the Chickens

We have the most entertaining little red squirrel living in the pine trees across from my kitchen window.  Over the summer he methodically took every piece of tassel off one of our deck chairs.  When he ran out of tassel to filch, he proceeded to take apart a shop towel. Somehow, though, he lost his patience with the slow process of pulling strand by strand, he proceeded to yank on the towel until, finally, it dislodged from where it was wedged in the John Deere trailer.  He grabbed the shop towel and shlepped it up the maple tree.  It was the funniest sight because the towel was about 4 times the size of this tiny squirrel.

Fast forward to today.  In front of the chicken’s run, there is a little toy shopping cart – a guest must have left it there, and we haven’t put it back into the sandbox.  So there it is and there are the chickens.  Somehow, now there is a shop towel in this little shopping cart as well.  I have no idea how it got there or who put it in there.  The squirrel comes to get this one too.  But the chickens will not have it.  There is, at this moment a dance going on where all 3 chickens are hovering together right there where the cart is, spreading their wings to scare the squirrel, and the squirrel is jumping around like a boxer in the ring, trying not to be seen or shushed away by the hens.

It is the most entertaining spectacle and, how could it be any other way, I do not have a camera ready to go and my phone is out of “juice”

So This Happened Today…

The chickens have been making too much noise in the mornings.  I now let them out of their run as soon as I climb out of bed and have my first cup of piping hot coffee.

Today, as I was walking by The Robin, aka #1,  I see Esmeralda sitting under the sink beneath the hostas. I was afraid that she wasn’t feeling well.
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About a half hour later I stopped back to check on my sweet Esmeralda but she was no longer under there.

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the sink in front of #1 (The Robin)

I needn’t have worried. What I saw instead was too good not to write about.  Especially since I have been complaining about the girls being lazy

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18 beautiful eggs

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18 beautiful eggs

The little stinkers, I bet there are a few more nests under some trees here and there…

The Interloper

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There is never a dull moment at the Wayfarer!

A couple of weeks back,  a ruckus started in the chicken coop.  The chickens chased “Tootsie” all over the run and attacked her something awful.

I went out to check on the girls and to see what was wrong.  The noise level was very uncomfortable.
I was stunned to find “Tootsie” looking really mangled.  Feathers were missing from her chest, her comb was damaged – she looked awful.

When night time approached, all went quiet, but the next day the same ruckus.  Mike and I decided to let the chickens out of their run, so they could separate and quiet down.
When Mike suddenly realized that we had 3 black chickens, not 2 like there should be.

Turns out his friend had smuggled into our coop a chicken from his coop.  An ugly black, battered by a rooster, chicken by the name of Royal.

He thought it was funny, I did not!  My chickens were traumatized for a couple of days.

Mike caught Royal, after chasing her through the bushes, in his pier fishing net.

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She was picked up by her owner shortly thereafter.