A Chicken Story - part 4

One last story about the chickens. During one of the recent fiascos of trying to get the roosters to sleep somewhere where we couldn’t hear them crowing if they should choose to do so at 3am, I decided to try tricking the roosters into going to the main coop. I just had to put some scratch down so they’d come into the main coop.Well, this got most of the chickens in, but the roosters were on to me and decided the freedom of the annex was way better than some corn.
So I attempted to get them out of the annex so I could push them toward the main coop. Now, something I haven’t mentioned yet is that leghorn chickens are extremely flighty. In fact, I’d say this whole batch of chickens is much more flighty than our last bunch. Everything freaks them out and they’re always running away, flying, trying to escape.

In my attempt to scare out the roosters, one of the silver leghorn females flipped out and flew up onto the roof of the annex. I reached for her, which made her freak out more, and she flew to the main chicken coop roof. Then, she hopped up into the enormous mulberry tree towering over the yard. And she kept going up, and up, and up.

“FINE!” I thought. “I hope a hawk gets you! You just sleep up there all night if you want!” Okay, I didn’t want a hawk to get her because once they get a free meal, they’ll be back for more. But I gave up on the whole venture and went back inside to sew and brood.

When Jeremy came home that night I told him what happened. He nodded his head a bit and laughed at our silly chickens. Then he went out to assesss the situation. A few minutes later I heard the most awful sound. I went outside to discover that Jeremy had donned a head lamp and climbed way up the tree to rescue that dumb bird. He was carrying her down and she was screeching and carrying on with the most dreadful sound you ever heard. It was like a cross between a screaming goose and a guinea fowl, for those who know what those are like. You’d think he was torturing her. And of course her cries for help inspired the whole rest of the flock to put up a ruckus of screeches, crows, and other obnoxious sounds. It was impressive.

Still not a word from the neighbors…