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?

Garden/Snake

when i first started writing about our TUF attempt, it had a lot to do with coop construction...that was the first step toward ultimately becoming a Totally Urban Farm. another one of our original goals was to build and start a vegetable garden, and almost exactly a year ago, we built the boxes for it on the day we got our first egg. this is what it looked like back then:

then we got focused on the chickens all summer, and it was really hot, and then i was a science teacher for nine months (time consuming, that!), and so the garden boxes filled with weeds and turned into a chicken playground/hot dog wallow...UNTIL THIS WEEKEND.  design revamped, enthusiasm renewed, the TUF garden is within a few weekends' reach!

the 3 original 6'x6' boxes got a 2'x4' inset for easy harvest access. each inset got 2 18" square patio tiles, and the rest of the growing area (84 square feet!) got dug up and covered with hay to get all the weeds out of there.  shortly we will lay down some landscaping cloth, cover it with gravel, cover THAT with local topsoil enriched with our delicious compost, and we will be ready for a fall garden. for real this time!

this space on the side of our our house gets direct morning sun from about 9 am to 3 pm, then is shaded by the house for the rest of the day.  i'm hoping that will be enough sunshine to grow tasty tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers...we are garden virgins for sure, so this will be a learning process. just like everything about the TUF!

speaking of learning experiences: last early june we had a brush with our first Texas Rat Snake, which resulted in the snake making him/herself scarce for the rest of the year.  well, s/he is back.

and now it is more than a brush. it is WAR.  this snake has been stealing the lovely ladies' eggs for the past month, ever since the beginning of may.  "may's snake month," our neighbor once averred, and at the time i was skeptical. no longer.  i am certain that this snake is a significant factor in hampering the as-yet theoretical five-egg day.

my thought is to carefully capture it, constrain it to a pillow case, drive it across 183 and release in a woodsy area. it has probably devoured like a dozen eggs at this point!  i'll go out there, check on the birds, see the carefully crafted deep egg-nests they like to make, but they will be empty.  the other day i caught it in the act of eating one of sammo's eggs.  i made ready to do battle, but the snake dropped the egg (!) and beat it.  and two days ago, as we were putting up the chickens at dusk, we saw it curled in the nesting box.  tumblr was peering at it with great suspicion, and the other ladies were as far away as they could be inside the coop.  we made a heroic joint attempt to capture it, to no avail. snakes always turn out to be surprisingly strong and nimble.

thus, the battle of the rat snake continues, and i will update you, Dear Reader, as developments develop!  and summer is coming right up, with all its time and promise...cooking! grocery store adventures! gardening! more writing!  it's almost, almost here........

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.......

TUFlock 2011: Pictures

after a few weeks full of rain, mud, and fowl pox, the ladies of the TUF have been enjoying good health and sunshine of late.  it was nice to spend some time with them in the yard yesterday.......

they all act a bit dubious of the camera at first, but then tailfeathers get shaking.

pearl is looking all nice and white again after a few days of muddy dinginess.  feathers have an amazing ability to clean themselves!  what a great adaptation!  good on ya, birds.

bolo's comb was glowing in the sunshine.  she is the biggest softest blackest cochin chicken ever.

tumblr is impressively colorful...she should start laying eggs any minute!  and they may be green or blue!  i can't wait.....

she also has awesome beard and shoulder feathers.

twitter was probably the most affected by the gross dots of the fowl pox, but she is making a beautiful recovery.  she also gets the maddest when i try to take pictures of her, but when she paused for an irritated glare, i snapped this shot.  she has such pretty soft bluegray feathers!

she should start laying any minute as well, and her eggs should be dark dark brown.

sammo has the best cheek feathers ever, and lays big green eggs. she is the chicken in charge at the moment, and nobody crosses her, although i have seen tumblr start to challenge her authority. 

pearl and ninja, the two original TUF chickens, are still best friends.  though smaller than the other ladies, they manage to hold their own high in the pecking order, and have formed strategic alliances with other chickens.  (the politics of the coop is worth its own discussion, perhaps in the near future!)

anyway, hooray for the TUFlock 2011!  we look forward to 6 egg layers very soon, and of course much more fowl play in the weeks and months to come.

Winter. Break!

i always look forward to this time of year so hard. school's out for a restful moment, some nights get down to freezing, people put up lights and make plans and give presents.  and make food!  the days blend into a warm and fuzzy blur, and round about december 28th i have the following thoughts:

1) xmas is already over? whoa!
2) the YEAR is nearly over? WHOA!
3) what all just HAPPENED??

And that final question, my dear reader, i hope to answer here--mainly for myself, though i deeply appreciate all y'all out there who pursue a mild interest in the various TUF antics.

now for starters, let's push all the holiday warmth and romance aside and talk chicken issues.  i spend a fair amount of time discussing the cute and fluffy aspects of urban chicken keeping, and haven't had to explore too many ugly or less desireable topics so far.  until the foul Fowl Pox!

that's right, people get chicken pox, chickens get fowl pox.  it's a virus spread by mosquitoes that is also communicable between chickens, so it gets the whole flock.  it causes little gross dots on your birdz. (here's more info from the backyard chicken peeps, if you are interested.) they can only get it once, thankfully (just like people chicken pox! ......what?) and it isn't too bad and goes away after awhile.  but it was GROSS, and it caused the ladies to be less lay-ful.  which was really just as well, because the good people at callahan's recommended we do a round of tetracycline antibiotics to prevent secondary infections.  and, of course, when they're on the antibiotics, you don't eat the eggs!  fowl pox is totally the worst!

anyway, we are recovering, and egg production is coming back slowly but surely.  all the ladies look better than ever, and seem to frantically enjoy the sunshine we've had for the past couple of days.  i'm sure there will be a fancy chicken photo shoot in the near future.


on to more pleasant things:  my 31st birthday came and went delightfully, thanks to my amazing family and friends. the most TUF-related treasure i received was this MARVELOUS ceramic egg tray! it fits perfectly in the egg compartment in the fridge.  i love how the eggs look in it!

this year the TUF hosted our first xmas banquet, gathering family from near and....well, mostly near.  san antonio and austin o'neils and camerons were present, and our brother-in-law-to-be braved the long and squishy drive from houston.  the normal TUF living room was transformed into the Banquet Hall, and we were a merry bunch, all 8 of us!  i made ugly-but-tasty cabbage, roasted carrots, mashed potatoes and cloverleaf rolls; our auntie brought a green salad, grilled asparagus and bread puddin'. gwen brought key lime pie, killer cheezcake and the cameron traditional Christmas Salad. and dad--oh holy night!--brought the Beef Tenderloin.  the wine flowed like.....um, wine!  the bread was broken!  seconds were had! deliciouscity ensued!

image credit: jb o'neil

and gifts and hugs and kisses were exchanged, as befitting a proper xmas.  but then, after all the anticipation and cooking and present-hiding and aromas and unwrapping, it's over!  december 26 comes, and everything goes back to normal.

....except not QUITE, ever, here on the TUF.  we happened to have a pheasant thawed on this weeknight-after-xmas, and some organic butternut squash.  that's right, a pheasant!  ha! why not!

we treated it just like we treat most birds headed for the rotisserie, as discussed before...rubbed and trussed, and rotisseried for about an hour.  this time we stuffed it with half a squeezed-out lemon, a carrot and some garlic cloves.

i threw the giblets in a pot with some water, more carrot, the other half of the squeezed lemon, some spices/garlic and a frozen leftover roast chicken...um...carcass (sorry) to make a quick broth for gravy.  i know, totally ridiculously un-necessary, but it's a pheasant, it should have gravy. i don't know why.  it smelled DELICIOUS.

while the bird roasted and the broth bubbled away, it was time to deal with the two tiny butternut squash.

dan cut the tops off, hollowed out the bulbs, and diced the flesh to stuff back in the center later. the shells went in the oven first, at 350 degrees, for about 15 minutes.

we sauteed the chopped up fruit from the necks and bulbs for a moment, to soften and garlic them up before replacing them in their native gourds to finish cooking.  then dan decided that these squash had faces.

without further ado, the squash guys were carved and stuffed with more of themselves and some shredded cheddar, much to their apparent displeasure.  they finished baking while the pheasant, rice and broth turned, boiled and bubbled away toward dinner.  everything cooked for just about an hour.

though FAR too much food for even us totally urban farmer types (ha!), it turned out to be an amusing and deliciously fancy dinner.  note to self: no matter how tiny you think it is, ONE BUTTERNUT SQUASH is all you need for two people!  just one!  see how grumpy they get!





anyway, new culinary and farming adventures await in 2012....new egg layers!  massive compost production! the fabled garden?  who knows!  i can't wait to find out. and i also hearby resolve to try not to let so many weeks go in between posts again. it results in long and blithery posts like this one!

as always, Gentle Reader, thank you for your time and attention.  stay tuned!