Buggered. Big hike this morning before it got too hot, then swimming in a waterhole as he tracked back home. Now just snoozing on the cold floor. Too tired to even be asking for dinner yet.

Well both birds are absurd.

We’ve had some pretty harsh cold recently. As such, the rooster has been staying on the porch in a crate at night. It isn’t heated, but it is out of the wind, and the temps stay above freezing.

He is, however, about as smart as a bag of rocks. He doesn’t ever want to go on the porch. But when he gets there he makes his little popcorn tuk-tuk-tuk sounds when he discovers the little pile of seed that gets put there as a reward for being a big, brave boy and climbing the steps.

However, he’s afraid to climb into the crate. So I have to pick him up, which turns him into a tea kettle; AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! He then looks at me like this has never happened before, with his eyes wide and his neck extended like “how dayuh you, suh! How dayuh you!” Like a partridge feathered Foghorn Leghorn.

I then put him at the entrance to the crate, he jumps in, sees his food and starts popping corn again, tuk-tuk-tuk, while picking pieces up and putting them down repeatedly. This will go on for fifteen to twenty minutes. New food! Hallelujah and praise the gods, new food! By which time the door of the crate is closed, and towels have been draped to block light and keep things more insulated.

This is every night. The exact same routine. He is always highly offended that my damn dirty ape paws have fouled his feathers, and utterly shocked that there is food present.

Then, come morning, when he’s singing the song of his people: er-er-er-er-ERRRRRRRR!, his lowly ape servants must scuttle to his aid, open the door on the crate and allow him to first express his indignation with another crow, before he grabs the shoe of whoever it is and thoroughly humps it. Nothing like a little morning dew on your shoe. Should we dally in serving his lordship, he will express his disfavor by pecking the shoe into submission before making sweet chicken love. This is why we all have a pair of rubber masturbatin’ shoes.

However, as he has (to date) successfully defended himself and our hen against a dog, a fox, a possum (though that poor bugger was after eggs, not chicken), and what may have been either a chupacabra or some mangy coyote, we put up with his highness. He’s dumb as a sack of rocks, but he’s gorgeous, and one hell of a good protector. Not too shabby for an unplanned member of the family that we were told was a hen when he was not yet crowing or growing spurs.

No joke, that one poor coyote or whatever it was had to outweigh the rooster by at least thirty pounds, and he was beating the ever loving hell out of it by the time I got out the door with a shotgun. I come hobbling towards them, the rooster hears me coming and goes batshit. He was already jumping and going after the critter with his spurs, but he grabbed the thing’s ear in his beak and went off. I yelled his name out and came up to end the fight, and he just jumps off and starts crowing like the king of the world.

The damn coyote or whatever it was busted ass back to where it had gotten in, and I didn’t get a shot off in time.

Then, the rooster just starts strutting back and forth from me to the hole under the fence, crowing and flapping his wings. It was like a “that’s right, me and my monkey homie gonna wreck you, so don’t come back”. I fill in the hole, get the fence back in line, and he’s just strutting around me the whole time. Normally, I get down on a knee like that, and he’s going to play tough with me, maybe get brave enough to peck my hip. Not that time; the bugger seemed both proud and happy to have worked with me lol.

Which leaves no room to mention the absurdity that is the hen and her first encounter with snow. Suffice to say that the sky was falling, and that old story made so much more sense.

Mixed. One is approaching the rainbow bridge. Our third to leave us this year. She’s been battling canine cushing’s for ages. Something internal has been bothering her recently. Vet says it’s not likely to be something minor. We made the call to say goodbye in four days.

The other one is peachy. She’s 12 too and still has her puppy face. The fact that her back legs don’t work really doesn’t faze her much. She’s slowing down though, especially this last half of the year. We anticipate saying goodbye to her this coming year.