Because the Alternative is Unthinkable: Scare

I am normally not a fan of Holiday Creep, but today I didn’t mind it – Thanksgiving stuff is half price already! Thanksgiving dinner is at my house this year, so I saved a bunch of money today

I felt so bad for my chickens yesterday… when I went outside to lock up the coop for the night, I was surprised to hear the ‘coo’ of one of my Ladies when I walked out the door. It was already dark out and normally they are all tucked in for the night just after the sun goes down, so I wasn’t sure what was going on…

I picked up my wayward Lady , who was nestled under my back stairs and carried her back to the coop - the whole way, wondering/worried if a fox or raccoon had gotten into the coop and got to the ‘flock’. When I got to the coop, I saw that the wind had blown the door to the pen shut (and it was windy yesterday!). Poor Granola had gotten locked out before she got inside for the night When I put her in the coop, I only saw three other Ladies inside… Pumpkin got locked out too.

In a way, this totally make sense – Pumpkin and Granola, my Red Stars, are the two rugged chickens out of the group… they will milk every last second of daylight before heading in for the night, so it makes sense that if the door closed at the end of the day, they would be ones locked out.

So next was the task of locating Pumpkin in the dark. I was kind of surprised that both displaced chickens didn’t stick together if they thought that they were going to be stuck outside for the night. I checked every place in the yard that I thought a chicken would roost for the night – I had my flashlight and called and called my normal “Heeeeey - my chick-chick-chick-chick-chickens!” call, listening hard for an answer. As time went on and I was running out of places to look, I was starting to panic. What if something had gotten her? So I did a second sweep of likely places and lo and behold – I found her sound asleep on my lawnmower