Homecoming

Dot the chicken is back home. The vet prescribed antibiotics, which means one of us will have to hold her while the other pries open her beak and administers the medicine. Joy. Dash, with whom she shares a coop, missed her (or perhaps just her warmth) enough to bed down with the other chickens in the big coop. It's kind of funny when one takes Dash's personality into account. Dash is usually kind of an asshole, insisting on that whole "pecking order" thing and enforcing it with well-placed pecks to the heads of the other chickens. The other chickens were magnanimous enough to let her into their coop though. Or maybe they were bullied into it.

The chickens don't know it, and wouldn't care if they did, but all of a sudden it's Thursday. Jeanine and Eva are at a Weezer concert tonight. Eva has a short list of bands she needs to see before they die, and for some reason Weezer is on it. Jeanine's list is even shorter, consisting solely of BB King, who is almost certainly closer to death than the surviving members of Weezer. My list, if I was to sit down and think about it, is probably both burdensome and unrealistic. I'll continue to attend shows when and where opportunity takes me. Not tonight though. Tonight I'm going to work.

Hawk

Right after I finished the previous post, there was a ruckus in the backyard, with lots of dashing around and clucking. Jeanine exclaimed "hawk!", and we dashed outside to discover a seemingly empty yard. There was a disappointed looking Cooper's Hawk on the roof next door. It flew off after we spotted it.

It took us awhile to find the chickens. They'd all dashed for cover. We were a bit concerned about Henrietta, because she's the lightest, which makes her the most likely to be singled out by airborne predators. Thankfully, she'd squeezed under one of the Bougainvillea plants, which has thorns long enough to deter even the most determined hunter.

Hopefully, nothing bigger will discover our yard. I imagine that, as long as we have a buffer zone of doves, the chickens are pretty safe. They definitely know when to dash for cover too.

Wildlife Notes

One of the chickens just ran like a crazy bird past the window, and Eva just reported seeing a hawk over in the neighbor's yard. That explains the running chicken. I looked out back in time to see the hawk flying away, but not in time to get a good enough look to identify it. I'm guessing Cooper's Hawk. Eva said she saw chasing the Mourning Doves that congregate in our yard so they can eat the chicken food. We're becoming quite popular with the local doves. Jeanine has seen 22 of them in the yard at once. My top count is still only around 12 though. I think I need to get up earlier in order to see real numbers. After all, the early bird catches the... chicken feed.

Speaking of wildlife, last night on the way to work, I saw three young coyotes. As coyotes almost always do, they vanished like furry ninjas seconds before I could point a camera lens in their direction. The moment is captured in my mind though, so I'm sharing it with words rather than photos. I love seeing coyotes.