The Chicken Chronicles 8.28.20

This was kind of a hard chicken week for me because our backyard neighbor, who hasn't been shy about how much she dislikes Bandit, yelled at me over the fence from her back deck for a while.  She kept talking (shouting) over me when I tried to respond and after several minutes of this, which included more cursing than I think I've ever heard from a live person, and her threatning to kill Bandit, I went inside and called the police myself time time.  Since she didn't want to talk to us face to face - she knows where our front door is - and she wouldn't listen to me from her deck, I wrote her a note and explained that we weren't keeping Bandit to annoy her but were actually looking for a home for him just to please her.  We love Bandit, crowing and all, and would love to keep him, but don't want to be inconsiderate neighbors.  We just haven't found a good home for him.  She hasn't screamed at us since, though I have heard her cursing Bandit to herself and seen her flipping him the bird (ironically) when he crows.

In pleasanter news, the chickens started jumping to get berries.  We see this most often at the raspberry bush but one day I saw Hei Hei jump to get the little red berries off of the landscaping bush by the house.  She can have all of the ones she wants off of there.  You can see a little bit of the girls jumping to get raspberries in the video below, and also notice how much Bandit does not like my phone.

This week it occurred to me that there are quite a few chicken/bird terms/phrases that are part of our lexicon, such as: ruffle your feathers, roost, don't be chicken, fly the coop, peck at your food, birds of a feather flock together, don't count your chickens before they hatch, don't put all your eggs in one basket, eat like a bird, chicken scratch, wing it, like a chicken with its head cut off, pecking order, fox in the henhouse, she's no spring chicken, crow (brag).

Edited 9/18/20 to add: cooped up, perch.

There are even more I found online that I wasn't familiar with, but which make a lot of sense after spending a few months with chickens: chickens come home to roost, up with the chickens/bed with the chickens, sneak the sunrise past a rooster, and henpeck.

In other news:

One of the kids left the fence gate open and after taking Eliza
and Luke to school, I arrived to find the chickens in the front yard.
I tried to herd them back through the gate, but that wasn't working
and they were starting to explore our neighor's yard so luckily Ben came out
to help me and brought worm treats to coax them back to the back yard.

We noticed that the chickens have made themselves a good dust or dirt
bathing spot in the side yard.  Thank goodness it's a very small spot.
Anyway, Jack and I hung out and watched them for a bit and Jack
had fun making memes with a couple of the pictures I took.

Bandit made Suz nervous to get to her camper one morning.
He might have attacked her.  Just a little.

Hei Hei really wanted to eat the metal thing on my jeans pocket.