Rosie the Chicken

For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live. - Ezekiel 18:32


So I have this chicken…

My dog is a known lover of chickens.  His name is Lucky, but occasionally he turns into his alter-ego, El Diablo, and kills and eats one of my chickens that has gotten out.  Or my ducks.  Or random bunnies.  He’s a meat eater by nature.  It’s no fault of his own that they are delicious.

So we keep the dog separate from the chickens at all possible moments and keep the chickens’ wings trimmed to minimize their flying over the fence and into enemy territory. 

But…

A couple of months ago I noticed we had a regularly out black hen.  Her morning trek takes her over her own fence, across the backyard, over the dog’s fence and into his pen, where she looks for a morning snack of june bugs that have drown in his swimming pool overnight.  Several times we’ve come home to find the chicken and dog in the dog pen.  So far, El Diablo has been ignoring the deliciousness of said chicken.

This morning she was perusing the selection of my garden and its fallen tomatoes and was selecting her breakfast from bugs under the oak tree. 

Our chicken reminds me of the hen from the children’s book Rosie’s Walk.  Our dog is the fox.  In the book Rosie takes quite a perilous walk about the farm with the fox always hiding in the bushes watching the chicken. 

Our chicken is brave.

And bold. 

And perhaps a little oblivious.
 

Just like Rosie...  So that shall be her name. 

Lucy

"The pig is also unclean; although it has a split hoof, it does not chew the cud.  You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses."  Deuteronomy 14:8

Guess what we got? 

Isn't she lovely?  The kids named her Lucy and then told her we were going to kill her and eat her.  We'll see how that goes. 

This is me pig wrestling with her on her first night. 

My husband really enjoyed it. 

I put the dog harness on her because she was less than cooperative and I didn't want to carry a screaming pig all the way to the barn.  This got her away from my ear at least.  Plus, it gave me something to grab a hold of.  Pigs are kind of like bullets. 

Ever been in a greased pig contest? 

I have. 
I didn't win. 

Lucy became a new roommate for the chickens.  They were scared to death of her.  One chicken was injured in all the uproar.  One pig's feelings were forever scarred. 

The next morning she was a bit more friendly.  We introduced her to the dog.  Lucky initially acted like he was going to eat her, but then decided it would be more fun to play with her.  Unfortunately the pig didn't speak dog.  She just didn't get it at first.  Finally she started chasing after the dog and a beautiful friendship was born.  Lucky and Lucy - BFFs. 

Someone asked me if I could eat my dog's best friend.  Hmmm. 

Only time will tell.

Another Egg-periment!

So last night I went out to gather the eggs and I ended up with three.  One was nice and "clean", and the other two were covered in dried, caked-on poop.  No amount of initial rinsing would free these eggs from their poopy encasement. 

I put them in the sink in a cup of water to soak and then I promptly forgot about them.  Always nice to surprise yourself with a cup full of poopy eggs in the morning! 

They were much cleaner, which is the good news.  The bad news is I'd left them out all night and now wouldn't be able to eat them. 

Well, maybe if I were a real farmer... 

So, with the somewhat disappointing results of my outdoor egg frying yesterday, I decided to do another science induced egg-periment with these two eggs. 

I'd heard you could cook fish in the dishwasher, so I decided to try eggs. 

I put each one in a baggie so that if they didn't survive the experiment intact, no harm, no foul for the dishwasher.  The hub said he thought the baggies would melt.  Did they?  Read on.



I put this guy in the silverware rack on the bottom of the dishwasher.



And this guy ended up on the top rack eventually covered by my over sized frying pan that is a pain to position in the dishwasher.

Then I poured in the detergent, set the cycle, and walked away.

I left the whole mess alone until the dishes had cooled completely.  Several hours had passed.  My dishwasher has one of those "sanitize" modes where the temperature gets up to 165 degrees or so. 

And the result was...

The baggies did not melt and the silverware rack egg looked like this inside:

Much more cooking than I achieved outside yesterday, but still a nasty, slimy mess.  Not exactly over-easy, for sure. 

But, surprisingly, the top rack egg looked like this:

Enough cooking occurred on the top rack that the yolk held its shape.  I thought that was pretty impressive and a bit surprising since I would have guessed the bottom rack to have been the hot spot. 

Don't get me wrong, I still wouldn't eat it.  But if you've ever wondered what would happen if you stuck an egg in the dishwasher, now you know. 

Do I not have better things to do?  Not really. 

Have a great day!

Chicken Traders

“Honest scales and balances are from the Lord; all the weights in the bag are of his making.” Proverbs 16:11

Yesterday was the official passing of the torch in chickendom.


My old (and when I say old, I mean 3 or 4 years) rooster had become a nuisance. His son, Betty, had officially become the dominant rooster, and with no hens of his own, the old rooster just kept everyone all stirred up.

My hub took the kids and the rooster down to the sale barn in hopes of getting $10 for the rooster. He was fancy with his poufy head feathers after all. Unfortunately, no one seemed to be interested in buying a rooster yesterday no matter how interesting he was.


It was getting hot, and the kids were beginning to get impatient, so they began to walk around, asking people if they wanted to buy a rooster. Well, now how you say no to my two cute little boys?


One of the chicken traders told my kids that he would give them a baby chick and two dollars for the rooster. Sold!


My oldest son picked out a black chick with a white stripe down its chest and my youngest took the cash.


He then promptly bought an extremely small and extremely loud baby chick. He carries it around in a little plastic snack container and coddles it nearly to death. It still has its egg tooth so it can’t be more than a couple of days old. I’m okay with the coddling because that is the only time the thing is quiet. The reason is because…


It is a guinea.


Great.


Yet another baby chick and a guinea.


Remind me not to use these chicken traders again.

Play Dates

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” Proverbs 17:17

This is Sugar:

She’s the neighbor dog.


Hater of cats.


Plucker of chickens.


Lover of the kids’ swimming pool when it is hot outside.


She visits us often, but hadn’t been around much lately.


This is our dog Lucky:

Eater of everything.


Killer of chickens.


Lover of cats.


And best buds with Sugar.


Every time he can’t be found, we only have to go as far as Sugar’s house. There you’ll find them chewing on a stick together or ripping apart a blanket or toy.


Unfortunately Sugar has more sense than our dog. He’s a puppy and she’s an adult now. Lucky would follow Sugar wherever she might want to go, which could include crossing a busy street. And he would most likely end up like our last dog who ventured close to that road and is now buried out under the pine tree in the pasture.


So, Lucky is penned up for his own good. But, Sugar came to visit this morning, so I penned her up with Lucky for a playdate. Turns out she’d disappeared from her owner this morning, and she’s in jail until he comes to get her, but I’m telling her it is a playdate.


They’ve enjoyed sharing a snack, biting each others’ legs, chewing up Lucky’s old shoe instead of Sugar’s this time, and watching a movie.


Ok, maybe not the movie part.


But they have been watching the cat. The cat is torn about joining the playdate because she knows how Sugar feels about her.

Turns out, I have a playdate of my own tonight. I’ll be meeting another mother from church at an ice cream shop to talk about what kind of volunteering we don’t have the time for, but would like to head up anyway at the church. Should be a good hypothetical time.  Plus, there will be ice cream! 


I had lunch with my friend last week after taking her to Goodwill on her maiden voyage. She was quite frightened at all the germ possibilities lurking there, of which I hadn’t ever really considered.


I talked to another friend on the phone yesterday.


The truth is it doesn’t matter what you do, or what you talk about, or really even who you spend some time with, so long as you have some company every once in a while.  Whether you love cats, or hate cats, that you’re together is all that is really important.


I’m sure today after my play date I’ll feel “full”, filled with the kind of fullness you can only get from time with a friend.


I’m sure Lucky will feel the same way.


Or maybe it will be the dog food.


It's hard to tell with dogs. 

Hearsay

"All a man's ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the Lord."  Proverbs 16:2


Here’s a conversation from our house last night:


Hub: “It’s about time for them to go outside.”


Me: “I know, but I think it is too cold.”


Hub: “Their water thing is really gross.”


Me: “I know. I have to clean it out every single day or else it gets really nasty.”


Hub: “They’re beginning to stink.”


Me: “And when they want something, they won’t shut up!”


Hub: “Well, as soon as the weather warms up they’re going out to the barn.”


Me: “I guess they could go tonight if we give them a heat lamp.”


[Brief moment of silence...]


Kid1 to Kid2: “Are they talking about us???”



Actually, we were talking about these guys:

But if the beak fits….

Surprise Chicken

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” Proverbs 19:21

You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit!

We’ve told these words to our children numerous times since their birth. The daycare used them, then we started using them, now the school uses them. It is part of their psyche, I suppose, by now.

A few months ago, I told you about hatching my first egg. (Read: Something Egg-citing!)

Betty has been doing just clucky and has turned into a very unusual looking chicken, taking mostly after her polish crested father. We eventually got Betty a buddy at the sale barn, whom the kids named Bommy. Betty and Bommy are inseparable… mostly because the rest of the flock never fully accepted them because they are the young ones.

Well, Betty is now about 6 months old, and guess what SHE did last week?

She crowed.

You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit… even with chickens.

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Jeremiah 29:11