Who stole my chickens and my hens ...

...the chicken and Rooster Welly line up for a photo-op ...

Don’t name your chickens if you are going to eat them.

That is good advice.

But it doesn’t work for my grandchildren who are raising chicks and need names for them.

And so, the chickens got names : Welly, Perry, Shy, Hey-Hey, Heart-Heart and Coco.

Three of them (probably the roosters), have beautiful showy leg of fine feathers.

I haven’t really thought about that phrase before, “my fine feathered friend”, but this would be the roosters.

The chickens wander past Miranda's cabin, past Dan's cabin,
past Moiya's, past Wyona's and to Glen horse shoe ring.

Miranda lets them out of the coop in the morning. I see them wander to the little copse of trees on the east of my cabin and then I don’t think about them for the rest of the day.

Oh, I was resentful toward one when I went to retrieve some unused tomato cages in that copse of woods and Welly belted out an unexpected and overly loud crow.

Miranda came to see what was wrong with the rooster. I was on a slope, feeling secure, but my relatives thought I was in a precarious position.
Busted.

Miranda came to my rescue, walked me over to her cabin so we could look at her flower bed and then I slipped on home.

Last night I asked Rebecca her favourite part of the day.

Her eyes lit up and she said, “When I saw the chickens at the Horseshoe Ring on Glen’s lawn. I looked up and there were the chickens.”

“What! How did they get over there. That is five-house walk down the block!” I know she said and then she laughed, “Well, you asked me for the best part of my day, and that is what surprised me most.”

I got on the phone with Wyona, a phone call I didn’t want to make. “Could you tell me if our chickens are bothering you. Tell me before it becomes an issue with you, or anyone on the property.”

“I think they are over here picking up the cherries that are on the ground, the ones we couldn’t pick up after we delimbed all of the cherry trees. The chickens aren’t bothering me yet. I will tell you when they do. Perhaps Moiya doesn’t like them. I saw her shoeing them out of her garden. They like ground under her cherry tree as well.”

... Welly's showy rooster legs ...

I didn’t think much of the cherry limbs until I saw them down at the lakeside of Wyona’s lot, stacked and ready to be burned.

“Adam Wood took all of the limbs that were the right size to burn,” Mary said to me. “He has a smoker in Edmonton, and cherry wood gives the best flavour to his meat. Expensive, so I can see why he was gathering them up.”

I guess everything is about recycling. Even when the chickens are eating the rotting cherries?

And how is it that at night Welly leads them all back to the coop?

One of life’s mysteries.

Arta