The Lady v. Chicken -- a draw?

I know you've been holding your breath since the last post to find out who's smarter: the lady or the chicken. I'm pleased to say I WON! Well, sort of.

After spending the morning in the front thicket wrestling cactus that have worn out their welcome, I went round to the back to do my first ever stakeout. Ninja's habit is to arrive for brunch sometime between 11 am and noon. I stole into the garage, grabbed a stool, and positioned myself so I had a clear view of her lair, but she couldn't really see me (not that she would necessarily be looking). I was getting bored and thought about taking some photos or checking my email when a streak of chicken went by. And I do mean streak. She shot out of her nest like a canon ball to the water dish, flew across the patio to her feeding area, and tucked in. Considering she had not eaten for 24 hours, I wasn't surprised at her haste, but as always was taken aback at just how fast she can be. This is her home:

While she was happily (or exhaustedly) taking her dust bath, I crept over with a basket to raid the eggs if I could find them. I confess, if I had a desk at that moment to bang my head on, well let's just say, the nest was a bit more obvious than I expected - if you knew where to look. There they were, these pretty little perfect eggs, still warm from her feathered mothering. Without a qualm in the world, they were in the basket and I was creeping into the house.

Her response when she realized her eggs were gone was heartbreaking. At first she looked confused, then pissed off. She kept checking where they were and then where they might be. If I didn't know it would be for her own good and health, I would've felt like a monster. But within half an hour, she was back to tearing up my garden with all the aplomb of a lady who knows that the game is not over, and she has many tricks under her wing.

Listening to a wiser friend makes a breakthrough

I thought about what a wise friend said about chickens and decided to do some sleuthing. She mentioned that chickens are not noted for their brains, though in the case of Ninja, she does have a great deal of cunning. So with her being broody, I had to adjust how to think about the problem.

I was giving Ninja too much credit and not enough credit at all. When Ninja came out for brunch today I decided to just stand still at the back door and watch her. She chowed down like a starving hyena, gave herself a nice dust bath, ran like wild dogs were after her to the water dish, and then -- wait for it -- disappeared into the spider plants we have all along our back wall. Watching her go in, I could distinctly see the little tunnel she has created.

Interestingly, we had been looking along that area, but the mistake was thinking she would choose to be closer to the wall. And admittedly, the spider plants form such a dense thicket it is impossible for the human eye to see through them. Now, I'm not making the rookie mistake of disturbing her (for the third time) on her nest -- even though, in my defense, the second time was an accident. So, the plan is to wait until she's scarfing down the delectable veggies and chicken feed brunch menu tomorrow, sneak over to the spider plants, and do a thorough search for what must be now about 20 or so eggs. If it works, it might shake her out of the broody blues and get her happily tearing up my garden in search of insects and other goodies.

Of course, it's only a matter of time before she does this all over again and we will be searching for a new nest. Last I looked, they didn't have any books written for chickens on how babies are made, so the hope that she will realize her attentiveness is pointless. I'm just relieved that, so far at least, she is still choosing to opt for the relative safety of our yard.

Saddened and confused

This morning I made a sad discovery as I was doing some light chores outside. And the worst part is I have no idea how I didn't see it before. There was a beautiful pale Siamese looking cat wedged between a large flower pot and the back of an old iron chair it sits on. At first I thought she was sleeping, though that would be a very odd place. As I approached, not even an ear twitched, so I reached and touched her. Rigor had already set in -- clearly dead. Of course I immediately start hyperventilating with all the possibilities. After posting on Next Door, the guardian was discovered so at least she knows and doesn't have to wonder. This happening on top of all the angst Ninja is currently putting us through has been taxing.

Ah yes, Ninja. We know that she is broody and we can't find her current nest with what must be a sizeable clutch of eggs by now. So what's the harm? First and foremost, broody hens won't leave the nest for hours and hours a day. Normally they are busy scratching for food and taking their dust baths and generally being perky the majority of the day. When they are broody they don't eat enough. They can lose as much as 25% of their body weight. That is not good in a laying hen. She doesn't know that those are not babies in the making and will never hatch. Only by finding the nest  and clearing it of eggs does it trigger, at least for a bit, her normal routine.

Of course, this is our third go-round with her determination to be broody, and this time we are truly stumped where she has set up shop. She could even have taken up residence in someone else's yard for all we know. She has been coming to eat for about 10 minutes a day, but that's not enough to sustain her health. So naturally I have to keep a constant eye out for her, worry she's not getting enough to eat, wishing I could get her to trust us, and so on and so on and so on.

Lest you think I've just gone batty over the chicken, think again. I'm constantly fuming when my favorite little squirrel doesn't show up at the door to personally take her walnut from my hand; I fret when my favorite dove couple don't grace my backyard; I spend 10 minutes searching for the two blue jay couples who should be swooping down for peanuts; and I count the crows and big pigeons to make sure none are missing from the group. I know, I know. Get a life!

Timing is everything...

With the cooler weather, I had so many plans that involved heavy digging and clipping and clearing and general cleaning up of the wasteland that is the City's strip along my property. So what do I do? The dumbest thing possible. I decide to go out in the pitch dark and check out an unexpected sound and promptly tripped and fell over a stack of stepping stones that have been there forever. Down I went, spraining my right wrist and thumb, giving myself a huge gash on my leg, and generally looking like an abuse victim with all the bruises. So much for heavy gardening -- or opening jars for that matter. Fortunately I have the greatest partner who takes care of me when I persist in hurting myself.

The day before the great fall, I had trimmed back the agave and aloe in said strip and was making a game plan for how much of the aloe I planned to remove. I had hoped to create an attractive, drought tolerant area which would also act as a fire break, but what I got instead were plants that looked scraggly and faded, often didn't bloom, overgrew the sidewalk, and often became infected with the virus that looks yucky. So after years of trying to make the aloe happier, I'm throwing in the towel. Mind you, since I live on a corner, and my yard is huge, I've got at least 250-300 yards of area to think about. As you can see, this tiny section looks ratty.

After recuperating for two days, of course I got bored and though I still can't use my right hand and feel somewhat dizzy all the time, I couldn't bear not doing SOMETHING. So, I took some painted corks I had left over from a years old program (painting sugar skulls on corks to celebrate the day of the dead) and stuck them on the very pointy tips. I had done a few in the front of the house and had a couple of people tell me how cheery it looked, and knowing some might get knicked, decided to put them out anyway. And no, I'm no the first who has thought of this. I have a neighbor who used corks on hers too (but natural). Frankly I'm very happy with the cheery result. And then, there's going in the other direction too -- told you!

Settling into new routines...good and bad

Routines can be boring, soothing or beneficial depending on your point of view. For dogs, routines rule. For chickens, not so much - though we are getting there.

Our new routine with Princess Sassy is one of ongoing worry and frustration. Since she's come home from the hospital, she is determined to defeat any attempts to entice her palate with food. We dutifully try to hand feed her, we cook for her, we even broke down and bought foods we would NEVER consider giving a dog to tempt her into tasting a few morsels. So far her answer to all this servitude is pretty much the same: nope, nope and nope. Every once in awhile, we're able to get her to eat a few bites, but nothing to sustain her paunch over the long term. Out vet assures us that as long as she is drinking she'll be okay for a bit. And I'm happy to say she's shown more zest in the last day. Our new routine for getting her medications down is paying off as well. But c'mon girl...you gotta eat!

With Ninja, I'm pleased to say she and I have hit on a routine that seems to be working well (although she still refuses to believe we are not monsters who are out to hurt her).  From what we can gather, she sleeps in the thicket in the front yard, but by 6 am transfers herself to the backyard where I put out her chicken feed and mealworms (yum!). She happily scratches through the mulch pile and various areas of the garden, and when she's ready for a rest, settles in a depression under the tree, where she also takes a leisurely dust bath. She then waits for me to sit on the patio in the afternoon before adding her fresh veggies, consisting of broccoli, carrots, mung beans, and bits of apple, to her chicken feed. I sit on the patio to show her we are her friends, and she will sometimes come quite close by to check me out, though mostly she is still wary. Then she hops over the back gate into the back of beyond for a bit, comes back to the backyard as I'm working on the garage organization and around 7 pm, we both call it quits and she disappears. Every now and again I find an egg, though I'm beginning to believe she has made yet another place to stash them where they cannot be stolen. Either that or she's on strike.

Fortunately, maintaining this routine is easy for me, because I actually hate having to dress in corporate drag to go anywhere and shopping has all the allure of dental surgery. So staying home to organize spaces to ready them for projects that have been put off for too long is a pleasure. Speaking of which, I am a mere couple of hours away from a functioning, clean workspace for said projects. And pardon my librarian background, but I even labeled everything in sight and (I should be embarrassed to admit this), organized the little itty bitty drawers alphabetically. Evidence below:

Ever think it's all going pear-shaped?

It's been one of those weeks. Our little terminator Sassy, a Shih Tzu who is even more curmudgeonly than I am, has had a serious lung issue for awhile. COPD best describes it, and I told her to quit smoking 30 packs a day, but.... Anyway, the other day she took a serious turn for the worse and our greatest fear is that she will contract pneumonia or bronchitis, which could kill her. So what does she decide to do? Why yes, starting with a horrifying cough which escalated into serious breathing issues, she clearly is in deep distress.

Because of COVID-19 our dearly beloved vet no longer takes emergencies and is booked solid every day. Off to the emergency vet we go, where you call from the parking lot and they whisk your baby inside and you cool your heels in your car. Two conversations later, we convince the vet there to let us take her home with a boatload of antibiotics and a cough medicine that apparently is on the controlled substances list. You guessed it -- bad idea. Within an hour of giving her 2 of the seemingly hundreds of meds we had for her, she upchucked all over the place and went from bad to worse. Back to the vet, where we surrendered her for the night, knowing that she would a) be wildly unhappy and b) be given nebulizer treatments that would open her lungs in addition to intravenous antibiotics and fluids that would get her over the critical hump. A day and a half later, we're told we can take her home. I think they just wanted her cranky, barky self out the door (they mentioned the crankiness a couple of times).

More medications, and home we go. She clearly was giving us the stink eye about being left, and we thought it was just a matter of giving her a good dinner and all would be forgiven. Not so. This is a dog who, round as she is, and incapable of drawing anything but shallow breaths, would run the length of a football field to get to a cookie crumb. I would've expected her to at least put her nose in the air in utter disdain before refusing food out of pique. So it shocked and alarmed us when she not only refused to eat, but she simply laid down and promptly fell asleep.

That was last night. Today she slept non-stop and calls to the vet were not satisfactory. Tonight a sliver of promise: she has lifted her head, gone outside to do her important business, and has managed to eat one tiny morsel of chicken. We just keep coaxing and crossing our fingers and willing her into health. We can only wait to see what tomorrow brings.

In Ninja news:

Ninja has settled into a routine of sorts that is very promising, but of course, because I could, I've upset the apple cart. (I warned you everything was going pear-shaped did I not? Sorry to mix fruits!).

Ninja spends most of her time completely destroying my back garden, which already has me re-thinking how to fluff up some areas to make them chicken scratch-proof. That aside, she then makes a graceful hop onto the back gate and swoops down to the back of beyond to do what only a chicken of her wiliness does (and we STILL can't figure out what or why). She has also stopped laying eggs in the beautifully hidden nest she created in the side yard, so I set about to find out if she had a new lair.

Knowing she likes very tight, heavily lush areas, I scrutinized every conceivable spot in the back of beyond, slowly made my way around the perimeter of the backyard she spends most of her time in, and then, drawn to the bromeliads in the old bath tub, decided to check that. My mistake was not doing it when she was visible because, you guessed it, she was there and hoo boy, was she one super pissed off chicken when I discovered her. You have never been cursed out in your life if you haven't been on the receiving end of a chicken's ire. To show her disdain for my meddling even further, she promptly went back to the thicket in the front yard and cursed at me the entire time I was watering.

So here's her new nest (until she decides to move again):

Another scare means more gray hair

Yesterday morning I heard a distressed clucking and looked out the window only to see a coyote jumping over the wall to my backyard as if the wall itself didn't exist. In the entire time we've lived here, we've certainly had our fair share of coyote encounters, but we have NEVER had one in our backyard. Between the thick hedges that line the wall, the trees that block the fence, and our naive assumption they would have no reason to come in, this was a shock. More importantly, I was out the door in 5 seconds and Ninja was nowhere to be found. Not a feather. As you can imagine, I was distraught. We finally managed to lure her into what we presumed was a safe space, and this happens....

Well, I should've trusted that our girl knows what she's doing when it comes to fending for herself. By 1 pm, she was happily strutting around, ruining my gardening attempts with all the aplomb of the diva she is. Since she was back, I looked at the one place that would be a chink in the chainlink, the area near our wall that the coyote used as her exit point. Fortunately I had some grids scavenged from a store closing. I was planning on using them for trellises and, like so many of my projects, hadn't managed to pull that together yet. Quickly we zip tied them to the fence and have created what we hope is an effective barrier to marauding coyotes. 

Meanwhile, Ninja seems to be getting a bit more relaxed around us, as she should be getting the idea that we ignore her and she can ignore us. I've taken to simply sitting in a chair and letting her roam around. She is still very cautious and yet curious. She'll even come closer to get a look at what I'm doing (just sitting there) and then go about her business. Though I wish we could figure out where she goes to roost at night and get her to the point where she will let us make sure of her safety, that girl's gonna do what that girl's gonna do.

Ninja doing her let's-mess-everything-up dance. (Sorry the quality is so bad)!

Never expected to be posting about a chicken ad nauseum

Well, here we are again. Ninja has become not only the main focus of this blog, but apparently of our lives right now. First thing in the morning: "Where is she? Have you seen her?" After spotting her happily tearing up all the recent plantings I've done in the backyard, a sigh of relief that a. she's still around and alive and well, and b. she's spending more and more time in the backyard which is safe from coyotes, and c. WHY OH WHY does she have to destroy so much?!? Between her and the squirrels the garden is doomed. That said though, she sure is cute and funny to watch.

Now you may or may not be wondering about the object behind her. It's from a Rose Bowl float of years gone by. It will not be staying in the back much longer. I have a cunning plan for it in the front yard. As with so many of my cunning plans, we may or may not be able to pull it off, but it's always fun having a go.