The chickens are restless

[summer_jackel]

Creatures, stop waking me up.

A couple nights ago, Trucker woke me up being very purr-full and affectionate, which I thought was quite sweet, welcome and charming until I looked up at the clock and saw that it was 1 am. Guh, cat, you are very loving, but can we please work on the timing?

This morning it was the sounds of chicken murder at 4 am. I hauled my carcass out from beneath portions of a blearily protesting collie, into a robe and out the door as quickly as I could, but I still didn't get out quickly enough to see what was banging on their metal feed can and making them scream. I've had pretty good luck with the fowl lately; things got bad in 2007, but we haven't suffered any predation since. (A yard full of wolves helps, unless of course it's the wolves getting the chickens). So I'm about due, right? :P It's part of having poultry but it still sucks.

So I get out there, accidentally step in the remains of yesterday's fridge cleaning efforts (ewwwwwwwwwwwww) and look around to see what's wrong. The three pullets are comfortably roosted, the dux are milling around, Marilyn and Arcata are in the nesting boxes, but I can't see Wild Blue anywhere. No sign of predation, nothing wrong. I looked more closely at Marilyn, a lovely Americauna hen whose plumage fires many shades of black, red and gold and who, due to some unknown accident last winter, walks with a limp. In the dim light, she appeared to have blood on her beak and hackles. It was like one of those moments in a horror movie, if it's really well done, when you know something really bad is happening but you just can't see it yet, and the tension comes knowing that the reveal can't be far away. Still, I didn't see major wounds, and Marilyn seemed comfortably settled. No reason to move her now.

I sighed, burrowed my way back under a stray collie paw or two and went back to sleep. In the morning, I go out with no little anxiety to see what carnage the dawn unleashed upon my flock.

Everything was fine. Well, other than the incriminating evidence that I really need to clean my fridge more than once a year. Wild Blue was still missing, but Marilyn had not a feather out of place or a speck of blood on her. I was in the process of feeding, and mourning my little blue hen even as I wondered why the 'coon or whatever had gotten the one bird in the flock who is the very hardest of the lot to catch (Felix the metheuselah duck, for instance, is completely blind and could probably be captured by a four week old kitten who was really trying) when there she was, alive and unscathed.

So there was no chicken murder after all. Everything's great. But I'm still disquieted, remembering the look of the flock in the moonlight, the mysterious crashing, the avian scream that woke me. Marilyn's cool, steady gaze, the blood on her hackles and her sharp beak that I may or may not have seen.

More goes on in the world than we guess at, even in something so silly and simple as a flock of chickens. We miss far more than we notice, I think, no matter how we try to pay attention. If there was a predator, someone would probably have died, or at least had a piece taken off. So what were they doing last night, my chickens of the darkness? Perhaps I should thank them for the wake-up call.

Comments

[troubleagain.livejournal.com]

Fighting for supremacy, of course. Hens are vicious. :D

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

I suspect someone disturbed someone else in the roost and they got Seriously Grumpy(tm) about it? I've seen roosting birds on wires bump one another and get into a massive tussle a moment later, in the dead of night.

And such scenes were immortalized by Pixar in their short "For the Birds". ^^

Or maybe they were possesssssssed! Call the Ghostbusters, quick!

[howl-at-the-sun.livejournal.com]

Chickens descended from dinosaurs. You have, essentially, highly evolved dinosaurs in your chicken yard.

Be afraid. Be v. afraid.

[saigh-allaidh.livejournal.com]

So very true!


I'd look for remains of some rodent...but then, they don't always leave any real remains. Seriously, my hens are mighty mouse killers and will eat every bit. The chipmunks, however, seem to always outmaneuver them. Moles and shrews, however, are killed but never eaten

[troubleagain.livejournal.com]

I'd be more concerned with the dinosaurs she keeps in the house. >__>

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

It's very true, and you can see the saurian in them when you really stop to look. The little rarely-blinking, perfectly circular eyes, the scaly legs, the velociraptorian spurs on the roosters (and older hens). Chickens are intense. Although yeah, the cutely colorful dinosaurs in my bedroom may be even more to worry about.

We as a species so often take chickens for granted. We shouldn't.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that my hens would kill me some rodents if they had access. The rats do come at night if I don't feed the chickens their compost early enough that they eat it all before sleeping. I think my bengal cat is doing a pretty good job routing the rats, though. Let's hope he keeps it up...

That's very neat that yours differentiate rodent-eating by species. I can't make the same observations on mine; the cats and dogs (hopefully) get to them first. I'm just glad that nobody eats the banana slugs, because that would make me Sad.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

It's quite possible, as is, I suppose, the chicken version of a night fright, which sometimes afflict parrots. Generally, once the sun goes down the chickens roost and don't stir unless they are being attacked, but perhaps because the moon was full they had enough light to bicker by.

Or maybe it's just ordinary demonic possession.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Hee, they really can be. Although generally, once the sun goes down, chickens switch off (other than roosters, who will often crow in the middle of the night. Neighborly reactions to same being why I don't have one, sadly).

A big long yowling chicken-scream at 4 am is definitely abnormal. I think it was just routine demonic possession, really.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of an experiment that my paleontology prof told us about in college. It seems that a scientist isolated whatever gene was responsible for feathers-not-scales and tweaked it in a hen's egg. The resulting chick did not survive to or at least much past hatching, but it was completely covered in scales. How cool is that?!

I wish the thing had been viable, because I really want a flock of scaly chickens, dammit. There are featherless chickens and chickens in which the neck is featherless (these are not attractive birds, yo) but it isn't the same.

[howl-at-the-sun.livejournal.com]

She has house dinosaurs too?

[howl-at-the-sun.livejournal.com]

I bet it would not be that hard to selectively breed.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Yep, two of them. Gavin is a green-cheeked velociraptor, Miz Kaya is a hybrid between the Senegal and Meyer's T-rex. This is clearly my cue to take and post more pictures of them.

[serenesgrimoire.livejournal.com]

Wow I miss your blog so much. So fascinating...! Hopefully it will continue to be nothing.

By the way, this is Jen, and this is my new witch blog. :)

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Well, if it showed up as a mutation and survived to adulthood, sure. Unfortunately, of the zillion chicken mutations that have cropped up naturally so far, that one hasn't...yet. Dammit.

My prof, when grilled about this subject after class (heh, I don't think she was expecting quite so much enthusiasm, or the 'where can I get some?!' questions) said that whatever process made the chick scaly also caused it to be fatally defective in other ways. Since the scientists in question probably proved their point just by getting the scaly chick, I don't think that ongoing work is happening to create this as a viable breed, more's the pity.

I'm still hoping, though.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

/hugs/ added you.

[jnlldxn.livejournal.com]

Man I remeber getting up in the middle of the night to protect our chickens from whatever was trying to get them. It sucked. We also had a wild cat of some sort get into the coop one night and kill most of them. climbed up on one building, and went through the top/back of the other. Then went out the front door that had been latched. it literally yanked the boards off the back and went in to get them. That was several years ago when there were lynx and bob cat sitings around here. We ended up having to keep the chickens behind electric fence after that. Had to run it across the top of the one building, and around the chicken fence.

My neighbors would come up and shoot the coons that we caught in the coop at night.

[saigh-allaidh.livejournal.com]

I think they differentiate by taste...I have in the past noticed that my cats and dogs that eat mice and voles also will kill shrews, sometimes, although seldom moles. The chickens, however, seem more keen on killing shrews and moles as I think they see them as a threat to eggs. The mice and voles, however, while probably killed primarily as threats to the eggs are apparently just good eating so they're a bonus. Chipmunks might be too, but they just seem to be beyond the chickens to get.

We need a cat. But our Greyhound, Scolaighe, has just enough cognitive power to want to kill it. The mice which have invaded our house, however, hold no interest for her. Or Gleann, but then he's trying very hard to not be mistaken for a cat. (I believe he was one, but one that wanted to be a dog...it's sort of a long story)