Thank You! and a chicken tale

Thank you dear friends for the kind encouraging words and get well wishes.  I appreciate you all so much. Thank you.

It's a good thing I didn't know ahead of time and could not see all that had to be done during the two hours I sat in that dentist chair. Thankfully and hopefully, it's over with.

Do you remember the little red hen who showed up in our driveway a few years ago, 2008 I believe it was

she was hungry and looking for a place to stay...a stray hen, of all things! I fed her and she has been under my feet fussing and following me around ever since. I used to joke that Mama sent this little hen to look after me...that's why I named her Jewel, after Mama.

She was peculiar...not wanting to stay in the lot with the chickens or sleep on their roost, unless she could have the roost all to herself. Occasionally, she would fly in the goat lot and sleeps in the box with the rooster

 

Jewel was the little scoundrel who broke the antique green bowl that sat in the old cupboard. Why, to her it looked like the perfect place to lay an egg. What a mess that was. I heard a terrible crash then flapping and cackling...all kinds of stuff flashed through my mind as I tore out to the front porch. There she was, walking back and forth, fussing and carrying on like it was my fault for not gluing the bowl to the cupboard.

Jewel has raised baby chicks three different times since we took her in. All her babies quickly outgrow her, taking after their papa... 

Once she sets her mind to something, she gets it done. I think she would take on the devil if she had to.

This past May, Jewel hatched another baby

Here they are, "the three (chicken) musketeers", always together.

It was right at the edge of dark a little more than a week ago that I noticed little Jewel was missing. The rooster was in his box, the hens had all gone inside the coop, and there was Jewel's half grown baby in a panic running from place to place, not knowing where to go. It broke my heart. Jewell always got first choice at where she and her baby would sleep...the other hens simply moved out of her way. 

It took some time that evening but I finally caught the baby and carried her inside the now dark chicken coop and sat her on the roost between two old hens. Well, of all the squawking and carrying on, you'd think I had put a snake between them, but the chick hunkered down so I slipped out and closed the door and stood there listening until everything was quiet.

More than a week passed with no sign of little Jewel. I figured it was probably a hawk or maybe even a fox that got her. 

Yesterday, thinking I should probably wash the blankets from Weetie's little doghouse that sits on the front porch before cold weather gets here, I reached in and to my surprise...

there she was, minding her own business! No telling how many eggs she is sitting on?  I won't be washing that little fuzzy blanket any time soon. 


Love,
Henny