Wordless Wednesday: Lay Lady Lay!

Startled.

On Sunday afternoon, I settled happily onto our couch for a much-anticipated nap. Naomi was napping, my husband was at the store, and Caleb was spending the afternoon with his grandparents, so I stretched out on the cool leather, let my eyes flicker shut, and bam. I was out.

I'm not sure how long I was asleep, but at some point I began to hear a screeching and squawking in my dream. I drifted in that weird in-between stage of sleep and wakefulness before realizing that I was actually hearing screeching and squawking. My eyes popped open as I heard what I'm sure was every one of our chickens, crying and crowing in the backyard. I leapt off the couch, flung the back door open, and beheld a frenzied sight. The chickens were running in circles in a panic. In my just-woke-up stupor I looked back and forth to see what could have startled them. A hawk? A dog? I couldn't see anything, but boy, the girls were freaked out.

As they ran in circles before me, one of the especially ambitious hens took off in a dead sprint, flapped her wings, and shot straight in the air. I followed her with my eyes and saw her determined self flap forward for about three feet, stop, and drop.

Right into our above-ground pool.

My jaw dropped open and I charged towards the pool. Remember, our stairs are not attached for the safety of the kiddos, so I had to hoist my (pregnant) self (in a dress) onto the deck to save the chicken. I frantically looked over the edge to see the poor panicked poultry hysterically flapping, yet floating.

Who knew chickens could float? Hmm.

Anyway. I knew she wouldn't last long in there, so I reached in, swiped her out of the water, tucked her under my arm, and scooted off of the deck. She flew out of my arms and made a beeline for the coop.

Now. Let's just remember that at this point I've been awake for maybe a total of 45 seconds. There was still a small part of me that wondered if perhaps I was dreaming all of this...I mean, they've never acted this way before! But, I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders, walked back inside, and shut the door behind me.

And saw this:

Oh geez.

I did a double-take before realizing I had left the back door open when I ran outside. This smart chicky must have felt a waft of cool air from the house and decided to check it out, and, once inside, decided the cool granite was the perfect place to perch.

Oy.

After much chasing and clucking, the hen ended up back outside, and my exhausted self ended up back on the couch. And then I laughed. Really hard.

Oh, the joys of country living, friends. Oh the joys.

Have a lovely day!

Les Poulets Sont Appeles ...

Pearl.

Henrietta (grey).

Bernadette (black).

I've only named three and they're banties. I'm fairly certain we'll keep all the banties, even if there is a rooster in there somewhere. However, we will not be keeping any Ameraucana roosters and since we don't know the difference between the hens or the roosters yet, we haven't named any of them. I'm sure we'll find out soon!

Good question!

Have a lovely day.

Chickens and Questions.

My blogger friend Whitney recently opened up her blog for questions and with the long weekend and busy week ahead, I decided I would do the same. I've done this before, so perhaps I've already answered everything you can think to ask. Or, perhaps I am not interesting enough to warrant questions. Either way, if you have a question about my little corner of the world, feel free to ask it. If I have zero comments at the end of it all, that's fine, too. I won't take it personally--I realize I'm a bit of an open book on this blog, so there isn't much to guess!

Also, yesterday we opened up the coop for the first time to let the chickens run around. They are able to scoot down their ramp and free range in the grass, but we've never opened the door to let them outside the confines of their coop. Once we did, it was nothing short of amazing to see these little fluffs of feathers become big brave birds as they stepped to the edge of the coop, looked down, and took a leap of faith to the grass below.

Who knew chickens could be so inspiring. :)

Have a lovely weekend, friends. Happy Memorial Day.

Movin' On Up!

Today the chickens left their home in the garage ...

... traveled across the lawn ...

... and were introduced to their new and permanent home:

The coop.

(Nevermind the box of oil in the garage with a fried chicken on it. Tacky, I know.)

(Also, note that there are only three chickens in the box in the garage. That is because most of the chickens had already decided the box was too small for them, and they ran around the garage instead. Crazy chickens! Now all of them are safely in the coop.)

We ordered the coop from a lady who has lots of chickens and has a self-proclaimed proven approach to chicken coop design. It has wheels so we can lift it and move it around the yard to keep it evenly fertilized, but it's very heavy, which should help to keep it from tipping in this crazy Oklahoma wind. While I understood the necessity of keeping the chickies in the garage as babies, I'm quite happy for them to have their own home!

Welcome to the coop, chickens.

To Get To The Other Side.

We are adjusting to life well here. Most of the boxes in the house are unpacked, although there remains a small mountain in our garage of unpacked boxes from storage that have yet to be pilfered through. The kids' rooms are organized--not painted or decorated or cutesy, but they're organized and arranged, with toys in their boxes and sheets on their beds and clothes in their dressers. The kitchen now houses our appliances and silverware and cookie sheets and such, with a place for everything and everything in its place. And just when I took a sigh of relief, a blessed feeling of SEMI-COMPLETION, my husband decides we need to shake things up a bit.

After all, we are country folk now, so chickens are the natural next step, right? Our front lawn just wouldn't be complete without a few hens pecking their way around our grass, consuming bugs, scratching dirt ... getting eaten by predators ... you know. Chicken stuff.

We had discussed the option of purchasing some birds of the poultry persuasion when we first put an offer on this house. Of course, the "plan" was to purchase them sometime later, as in, say, next year. However, my husband got it in his mind that this year was just as good as next year and why wait? This is why we moved here, right? To do country-ish things?

So, we loaded up the kids (and my Dad, bless his heart, who happened to be visiting that day) and my husband took us to a remote town down a remote road to a remote farm. And there we picked out our chickens: Seven Ameraucanas and six Cochins. Did you see that? Did you see how I typed those breeds as if I know what I'm talking about? Please also see this:

This is me typing this post with a website found via Google on how one spells "Ameraucana". I thought it was just "Americana", like folk and rock and roll. Apparently not. It's fancier. Anyway. The Ameracaunas are black, medium-sized, and will lay blueish eggs, which is all kinds of fun. The Cochins are broody little bantys that are more for show and fun because they are little and poofy with fluffy feet. They may lay some, but (from what I've read), their eggs and small and make an appearance rarely.

I took a poll on Facebook on whether or not we should purchase chickens and the most comical were the replies that encouraged the purchasing of chicks if only to read about it on my blog. Because they WANT TO SEE THE TRAIN WRECK. We know nothing of chickens, but we like to eat eggs, especially of the free-range variety. This is our best attempt at country living. Shoot fire.

So, yay for you, dear Readership, for reveling in the pure joy of watching my country living attempts result in an epic fail in some way, whether it be a raid on the coop by a secretive group of malicious possums or my right eyeball being scratched out by a particularly moody hen. Either way, it's surely to make some good blog fodder. And, the little dears have grown on me.

The chickies currently reside in a tupperware box in our laundry room and their coop will be here Saturday.

Yeehaw!

Have a lovely day.