The Serpent Siege: The End of an E(gg)ra?

photo credit: W.v.W

tonight, the war was won.

we had dinner guests this evening, and had reached that genial point when dinner is over but wine is still present and conversations flit from one subject to the next.  remembering that the chicken ramp was still down, i headed outside to put the ladies and gentleman to bed.  in the half-light of the porchlamp across the yard, i counted the birds by giving each a gentle touch.  i reached into ninja's normal corner of the nest box to count her, when i noticed she was sitting on the floor of the coop--not in her normal spot. at the same time i noticed that my fingers met something distinctly unfeathery.

could it be? i looked around at the ladies and gentleman. no one seemed particularly alarmed. bolo even sat in her regular place, which would be next to ninja, except that ninja had politely surrendered her spot to the cool coiling shadow.  was i just half expecting the snake to be there, and so had imagined that i touched it? with my bare hand? in the dark? i secured the ramp, closed the coop, and hurried inside, vowing to test my theory tomorrow in the daylight.  but when i related my experience to my companions inside, dan got up and retrieved the industrial-size flashlight from the garage.

we all marched outside, flashlight and pvc snake lasso close at hand. the chickens blinked at us in sleepy confusion as w. held the light, dan wielded the rake, and i held the lasso at the ready.  the snake was a bit sluggish in the cool of the evening, and sated by his daily egg feast.  after hay-removal and a bit of prodding, he uncoiled and started to make a break toward the back of the coop.

dan pinned his middle with the rake. i slipped the loop of nylon rope over his head and pushed the pipe forward, trapping him.  he coiled and uncoiled his 5 foot long body, very nearly dislodging himself from our double grip.  finally, he stopped thrashing for a moment to assess his situation, giving us a moment to assess ours.  w. took a turn at the rake, dan held the light, and we maneuvered into a siege position. we had left the pillowcase inside.

photo credit: W.v.W

(the chickens watched all this with varying degrees of mild interest to mild alarm. the rooster even seemed vaguely entertained.)

"d," i asked, trying to sound brave, hoping the snake's head didn't slip into the pipe and come flying toward my face, "could you please go find a pillowcase? you can check in the linen closet, the second door in the..."

"just pull one off one of the bed pillows," dan said, ever practical. d. came back with a pillowcase in short order.

at this point, the snake figured the only way out was through, and so he slipped his head up into the pipe (toward my face). dan quickly tied the open end of the pillowcase around the of the pipe, hoping that the creature would slither straight into it. this would have been successful, except the snake reached a point at which his middle was barely too big for the pipe.  thus, he got stuck--two feet of him in the pipe, the other three hanging out the end.  winnie the poo style, sort of, except longer and scalier and less cute.

photo credit: W.v.W

i reached down and grabbed his body where it entered the pipe, keeping him stuck. he writhed healthily, wrapping his tail around my arm and releasing a putrid defensive musk. at this point, we were confident that he could not escape. it was time to relocate the egg thief across the highway.

d. and w. agreed to hold down the fort as dan and i hopped in the car for the final chapter of the snake battle. i held him steady inside the pipe, his tail wrapped firmly around my arm, until we got across 183 and down a convenient side street with an empty lot.  dan untied the pillowcase, and i started to loosen my grip; the snake sensed freedom was imminent, and started thrashing anew. on a count of three we threw the snake, pipe and all, in one direction and retreated in the other.  i think i saw him slither off, freed of his pvc prison.

and so, the texas rat snake war has ended--i hope. could there be others? was that one just one of many? i respect you, texas rat snake, you are strong and nimble and quick and scary. but should you or any of your kind come back, we are now seasoned snake battlers. we shall defend our eggs and our (rather complacent, to the point of snake room-mate welcoming) flock. you will be relocated!

some final thoughts:

1) it took four grown ups to deal with this snake. Four! Grown Ups! (thanks to d. and w. for moral support, pillow case and rake support, documentation, and coming over for dinner)

2) i'm glad we didn't have to kill it. there was a moment there where it seemed like that might be the only option.  i am thankful that we were able to drive it across the highway and let it go be a snake someplace else.  catch some rats or something, rat snake!

3) so much for the big mean rooster defending his hareem. what a..........chicken. oh.

4) snake musk = stinky and sticky, and unlike any other smell i've ever smelled.  noted!  that's a pretty good defense mechanism.

5) the snake fought bravely, and we fought bravely.  we have had TUF success.  now....Five! Egg! Day?

Fiftieth

this moment i sit on my back porch balcony, having concocted this adult beverage.  it's a fancy affair of orange juice, grapefruit preserves made by a good friend and traded for eggs, organic strawberries, and local vodka.  _lovely._ as is the weather, warm and breezy and greensmelling.

i won't lie to you, Dear Reader.  i've been holding out.  holding out for that most holy of theoretical days, the Five Egg Day. i've got five hens a-laying, and i really wanted to mark the Fifitieth Post with a Five Egg Day.  i also realize that april 10th marked the anniversary of my very first silly post, and i kind of wanted all these stars to align, you know?  fiftieth post, five egg day, year of TUF.   how poifect would that have been?

but nothing is ever perfect, which is exactly how everything should be.  the ladies and gentleman have the full run of the yard now every day, and seem absolutely thrilled.  we will occasionally leave them in their orignal run for a day, which they dearly loved at one time, but now they spend the whole time in there looking exasperated, as only chickens can.  so these days they are pretty much as free-range as it gets for a Totally Urban (chicken) Farm.

i can't believe i ever thought
he was a girl.

tumblr, while nearly intolerably loud, appears to be a fine czar of the yard. he is vigilant and watchful, and often puts on a showy, strutting, clucking display for the benefit of his hareem.  all the ladies have accepted his leadership at this point, and he seems to do a good job of attending the whole flock while devoting some individual attention to each hen.  i know that sounds ridiculous, but i swear he takes them on dates.  and he makes a variety of strange dinosaur noises: various forms of alarm or annoyance, surprise, his odd clearing-the-throat-while-howling crow, and the occasional elongated string of rythmically delivered clucks punctuated with bwak-KAWS turned up to 11.  i have decided this particular sound is the chicken mantra, actually....they all do it, though tumblr does it at a spectacular volume, and when they are at it, it is unstoppable. bok bok bok bok BWAK bok bok bok BWAK KAW bok bok bok BWAK etc.  happily, it doesn't happen THAT often.

the ladies have discovered that the yard is large and harbors many delightful nooks and crannies for surprise egg laying.  i have had an easter egg hunt every day since easter, and now i completely understand where the tradition originates!  why lay 'em in a logical place like the coop nesting box when you can lay them in grassy corners, between slats of leftover lumber, randomly on the ground...

so i sought to create some cozy egg-laying spaces in the exciting (to chickens) area under the porch/balcony in the back yard, with the intention that i could facilitate fun egg-laying practices while somewhat reducing randomness.  we also stashed the haybale dan brought home the other day under there, since we have graduated beyond the $4 bag of hay days (and the bales are only $15!).  we logically put it in the wheelbarrow, which we logically wheeled into the under-porch area for easy coop access.  WELL.

the very next day i discovered this very ILLogical egg placement.  spurning my delightful boxes, ninja and sammo laid their eggs right smack dab on top of the  haybale!  i guess no one ever accused chickens of being especially logical.

today, however, i found two eggs nestled in the big blue box.  twitter and pearl seem to get it.  oh well, as long as we're getting two and three eggs a day, i don't much care where i find them.  the ladies take turns being the super egg champion!

sometimes we get weird ones.

bolo

sammo

pearl

ninja

twitter

per usual, i have been enjoying some delicious egg dishes...

poached eggs perched over quinoa over refried black beans over organic salad greens, drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette....fast and fabulous!

migas (scrambled eggs/leftover salsa/bottom of bag tortilla chip crumbles) and toast!

more soon, Dear Reader, i promise!  because i have many more pictures of food and adorable pets to blither on about.  i can hold out no longer.  

and yet-the theoretical Five Egg Day  awaits.

Spring Chickens?

today was a beautiful day! texas weather has an erratic personality, and it has been fickle about cold vs. warm of late.  if today was any indicator, it seems that warm has won out and spring is springing earlyish!

i know the air is a perfect temperature when it simply doesn't occur to me.  we ran errands and went to the dog park today, and at no point was i like, oh man, i'm sweaty! or, oh man, i shoulda brought my sweatshirt! or, gah, i'm going to drown in humidity! i spent all my outdoor time enjoying my family and my great town.  HOWEVER,  i worry that i'm going to be thinking about the air  A LOT come summertime.  which at this rate is going to show up in mid-may.  so we've got to revel in these rare weeks of perfect air.

today we had an exciting chicken adventure....the ladies and gentleman got to spend some supervised time in the yard at-large, outside of their normal corner enclosure!  while the chicken run proper is scratched down to the dirt for bugs and dust baths, the recent rains and sunshine have filled the rest of the yard with chickweed and grasses and bugs.  it didn't seem fair that the girls and boy should have to look at the grass all day and not be able to get up in it!  so, we opened the chicken-sized door at the base of the coop and they took a back yard jungle journey.

they stayed together most of the time, going to town on all the grass and weeds and flying insects.  tumblr kept his hareem under close watch, and would sometimes call them all together with funny high-pitched baby clucks.  the dogs were also present, and though confused by the sudden proximity of these strange creatures, they were quite polite. it was a significant step in backyard TUFness!

as they clucked and fussed and scratched around the yard, i wondered if their homing instinct would kick in at dusk and they would put themselves to bed, per usual--or if i would be running around in the near-dark, chasing and plunking panicked chickens back in the safety of the coop.  impressively, they maintained a mental map of yard geography and took themselves home, crops FULL of tasty yard goodness.  chickensperiment success!

this will not be an unsupervised practice, i think...the flock shall stay in their spacious corner run during the normal week. but i think weekend yard excursions will become part of the weekend TUF traditions, and perhaps future enclosures will be informed by the impressive efficacy of the homing instinct!

in other news, here are two delicious ways to prepare the eggs that these lovely birds provide.  you, Dear Reader, will be the judge as to which is the more creepy......

on the left we have a goatcheez omelette alongside a tomato leafy salad (with goatcheez sprinkles), all drizzled with some good balsamic vinaigrette, for dinner.  on the right we have classic poached eggs poaching, to be served over a slice of buttered whole-grain toast, for breakfast.  (one of these kept looking at me until it was done cooking. STOP LOOKING AT ME EGGS!!)

they ended up looking just fine on the toast though.  WHEW. i do love poached eggs; i crack 'em into shallow water boiling in a skillet, to which i have added a dash of white vinegar.  i let them boil for about a minute, then turn the heat down to a simmer and cover them loosely with whatever pan lid is nearby that mostly fits.  it takes 5-7 minutes for them to cook until the white is set and the yolk is barely solid on the outside, but perfect fondant runny on the inside.  kind of fussy, and they might stare at you, but. SO TASTY.

and finally, i scored a red ram's horn snail from the not-for-sale aquarium at the exotic pet store for the price of a mere superworm! ($.12) i put him in the buddha betta tank, and though quite small, he is growing quickly and is WAY MORE than twelve cents' worth of entertaining.  he is not a chicken or a recipe.  but i love aquatic snails.











anyway, more as things develop!  keep pulling for the theoretical 5-egg day!  thank you for reading as always, Dear Reader. stay tuned.......

TUFiatus Ending II: Chickenry

january was a hiatus for everyone here at the TUF, including our five lovely chicken ladies and one pretty/loud rooster.  well, i guess the rooster never goes on hiatus, if you know what i mean.  but the laying ladies took a couple weeks off in january, which i discovered has more to do with the amount of daylight available than anything else.  who knew?  chickens lay best when there are 14 hours of sunlight in which to scratch around.  so as the sun comes back, so do the eggs.  and lately we've been back to our pre-january 2 and 3 eggs a day rate, but i am still waiting on the theoretically predicted but as-yet unmanifested 5 egg day.  that, my friends, will be....well, it'll be a 5 egg day!

the egg in the middle up there is twitter's first viable egg...the tiny gray chick is all grown up!  as she came into laying age, she had a couple "miss-eggs--" two were broken to bits before i could collect them, and one intact one had a distinct beak-shaped hole in it. i can only imagine the surprise a chickendividual might feel when one day one's body produces and then pushes out an ENORMOUS hard-shelled ovoid object. i would probably peck it too.

anyway, they are beautifully dark chocolate brown, and of course delicious!

something a bit odd happened, though; twitter laid about 3 beautiful eggs, then this extremely strange egg, and now has stopped laying anything for a couple weeks. i'm thinking she may still be getting over the shock of having these strange objects emanate from her being.  too bad there's no way to have an honest conversation with chickens re: the ins and outs of poultry puberty.

...which brings me to tumblr, our other feathered pubescent.  at 7 months he has come into his own as a testosterone-laden, crowing, wing-dancing, hen-tackling cockerel.  he is the most dinosaurish thing i've ever seen; weird- and awesome- and creepy-looking!

his comb has really started to stand up, and he struts amongst the girls with such self-importance.  he also REALLY likes to hear himself crow.  often at the most random of times.

in fact, during an overnight thunderstorm recently, he crowed ALL NIGHT. 1 am, RR-RR-RRRRRRR. 3 am, RR-RR-RRRRRRRRRRRRR. to the point where i was imagining being the neighbors and changing his name to "soup."  the next day, we brought eggs to the 3 sets of nearest neighbors and took an informal survey of rooster annoyance.  it's unclear whether the egg bribe influenced their responses, but they all either said they didn't notice (!?) or that it wasn't bad enough to detract from their quality of life.  we left the door open for honest rooster complaints, but so far none have come up.  for the moment, tumblr stays tumblr in all his colorful, noisy glory.

a word on eggs: i have not noticed any difference in the taste or appearance of the eggs that have been laid since tumblr started getting eggy with the ladies.  i can only assume some of them have been fertilized, but there hasn't been any strangeness/grossness associated with this fact.  and as long as he stays this side of fatally annoying, i would like to dabble in chicken genetics perhaps....especially around growing fancy colored eggs!  ambitious? yes, and not for the near future.  but i am having a boutique egg farm fantasy....

at any rate, these are the newest developments from the TUFlock. we're glad to be getting eggs again, and i look forward to spring, where i believe an egg bonanza may be had! 14 hours of sunlight, 5 laying hens, here we come! chicks? gardens? a new coop? so many possibilities await in 2012!

wait, that's not a chicken!

! Important Correction/TUFdate !

today, this last day of 2011, i have experienced a Major Paradigm Shift.

are you ready for it?

TUMBLR

IS

A

ROOSTER

he's a rooster!  a boy chicken!  a cockerel!  growing into a full-fledged cock!  several things should have clued me in earlier:

1) the noise he makes when we open the coop in the morning that i was calling an "overenthusiastic cluck;"

2) the neck poofing dance he has been doing at the other hens;

3) the crazy looking plumage and stand-up shiny tailfeathers

however.  i got him from a ameraucana pullet chick bin at callahan's, and so i was really REALLY not expecting him to be a him.  it took a highly chicken-experienced member of the backyard chicken forum looking at my previous post to gently point out that tumblr would not be laying eggs at any point, now or ever!  and then the pieces fell into place.

so, tumblr's a rooster.  are chicks in our future?  chicken genetics research?  too much overly enthusiastic crowing? so far he's not been too obnoxious, and he is SO pretty....

TUFsuprises! new TUFventures!  bring it 2012!!