Salve Chicken....

Does the word Salve derive from the same root as saliva?  They both sound suspiciously latinate.

This herbal salve my daughter makes out of, I am assuming, beeswax, oil and various secret greens, is a healing balm of miraculous properties.  Last winter I fell on the wood stove searing my hand completely.  Terrible 2nd degree burns, and painful as hell, this salve healed it up in under a week.....[PSA]

Today I was trying to get close enough to check Buck's comb for more damage or infection [without getting a pointy object in my face for my trouble] and saw that he is doing vastly better.  I'm thinking of trying it out on Barbie who has been mercilessly pecked, plucked, clawed and pummeled by Buck and the other hens.  It does not pay to be Buck's favorite, it reminds me of those girls in high school and the "cheap" ones in junior high school, who probably were really victims themselves, though we didn't see it that way at the time] who wore their hickies like flags to show that someone found them attractive and branded them. 

The ladies have not one issue with staggering around the yard looking bedraggled.  They wear their loss of feathers with philosophical acceptance.  They are the housewives in flowered housedresses, aprons covered with flour and gravy, terrycloth mules on their flat feet, pouchy eyes and puppet lines.  

Still, if I place a mirror in the yard next to their coop or the trees by the mailbox where they like to sit and chat, they will stand and admire.

.

Buck, of course, believes himself to be the grandest chicken in the jungle, no matter what his feathers are about.

Saliva Chicken?

On NPR yesterday when I was just thinking that all media outlets needed to be taken out and shot there was a piece about correcting odd Chinese menu translations.  Husband and Wife lung slice, for example.  I'm not sure what they are going to do about that one, but Saliva Chicken was obviously supposed to be mouth watering chicken.  I'm pretty sure I would not order saliva chicken, [Buck agrees] and it does seem that between google translations and a mutual misunderstanding of foreign idiom, we are bound to order something nasty or possibly be pleasantly surprised.  Another argument against being presented with "that foreign muck" as a friend once put it.
Well.
A more local cuisine seems to have been Buck's comb, and I'm wondering if I'm going to just have to set the alarm and get up early enough to let Buck get away from hens with grievances.
This morning, they were all on the porch, the door blew shut and even my lethargy was moved by the sounds of chickens in a panic.
Before 9:00 AM Buck had already been twice thwarted in his goal of removing a piece of me so you will understand my reluctance to be on a closed in porch with frantic chickens, but I am a big girl and they are a fraction of my height and weight and I have a broom and raisins for distractions and diversions.
I got past them and opened the door letting them out before I noticed that Buck's head was covered with blood.
Went back, got a towel, engaged in some matadorial maneuvers with Buck until he had the towel firmly in his beak.  Before he could take off with it, I dropped it over his head and picked him up.  It always surprises me how docile and charming he is when he knows that resistance is futile.  I put him in the tub and cleaned off the blood with a warm washcloth, put some of my daughter's magic healing herbal balm [contact me for her contact info] and let him loose into his flock of disgruntled hens.
He is so intent and serious about his job, so careful to keep track of his ladies and to chivvy them out of their hideouts, keeping them together and safe. He makes sure everyone is in at night [probably why he resents the beak check.  Probably thinks it's an insinuendo about his competence] and waiting until all the hens are out of the coop in the morning before he starts nailing them.  What are they upset about?  Maybe I should spray his exterior with some nasty tasting substance like Brut.  

Bed Hog.

Buck likes to sleep near the door in case any humans try to open it for beak checks at bedtime.

"Check this!" he advised me the last time I was optimistic enough to try it.

I won't be opening that door after dusk without a face mask and a helmet.

Trying to see them through the small chicken door means using a mirror, because there is little time between the sound of Buck jumping off his perch and jamming his beak into my hand and my getting an accurate count. Best if I use a flashlight and look through the window, or trust to the Guardian Angel of Chickens to know if they are all in the coop.

It's not an unreasonable thing to be doing - not compulsive or anything;  sometimes I'm lax and don't latch the door open during the day, and if the wind blows it shut, they have to find some other predator free place to roost.  What I know and they don't is that the only safe place is in the coop.  

Tonight as they were settling down, I heard more arguing than usual and it had a distinctly acrimonious tone.

I found that 2 of the hens had taken Buck's favorite location and would not step aside for him.  He leaned in to their personal space, breathing heavily and making personal remarks.  He moved 180 degrees on the perch in close proximity, disturbing what feathers he had not already raked off their backs.  That did not work after several tries.

  He jumped down and tried jumping up again in the place where his spot should be, landing on recalcitrant hens.  Eventually, he gave up and just crowded them, hoping that time, and no pillows or blankets would do the trick.  

free lounge chickens, again

In this freakish weather we've been having, the chickens have gone back to their summer ways

I think I'd had the deck cleared of all winter detritus for as long as it took to upend the chair before the chickens came tearing around the side of the house hoping for some watermelon or lettuce. About an hour of scratching and nibbling and they are ready for a little lie down.
 I don't even bother to buy them chicken pellets or meal anymore, it's like expecting them to eat instant oatmeal when they can have pizza.
I found out more about what makes Buck the way he is by talking to the guy who gave him to the guy who gave him to me.  I was told that Buck attacked him with enthusiasm, jumping up into his face, so he adopted a policy of whacking him with a broom on a daily basis in order to manage the flock.  Buck has gotten simpler in his approach since he moved here, I haven't had him go for my face, it's just too much trouble to jump that high, but I can't say that I would feel safe lying on the ground without sufficient bribes or shielding.
I  found out that he is an Aries, so he got a pineapple for a birthday present this week. He is a year old, so that once again shows me how much the avian specialist vet knew.
Buck doesn't like pineapple, as it turns out, but was consoled with cat food.
He also turns out to be, as I suspected and hoped, a French Maran.  It's not the most frequently seen breed of chicken around these parts, and so I'm extra glad he didn't get either tossed into a cauldron or turned into a capon.  I wonder if it's worth coming up with a couple of Maran Hens?
Feedback on this point would be gratefully received.
Now with the good weather here, and the freedom to roam far from the deck and turn over every leaf on the property, everyone is in a good mood and I can hear them making little trills and whirring noises to let each other know they are there and  happy.
Buck's version of this sound is somewhat more like prolonged belching than singing.  I suppose that could explain why he comes over and crows next to my knees when I'm playing the accordion.

 I'm still not clear on the fine points of Avian American dialects, but my guess is that Buck and his ladies have been asking each other WTF all day.
The black flies [Northern scourge] have arrived 5 weeks too early.
Today, technically still winter, there were butterflies.
Tulips are up and shouldn't be for some time.
I hear the continual conversation between the chickens as they turn over leaves and sticks and find things to eat that shouldn't be there this early.  They have stood at my feet, peering up at me and asking why I'm not doing something about this, or is it that I just don't notice.
Hens are sitting on eggs.  [I'd better go & remove those eggs...] and if we get any normal weather back, there will be cold little chickens and I will have to do more work, will probably wind up moving them in to the bathtub.  As I am allergic to chickens, this isn't my first choice.
Today I tried to get in the house with a bag of ground coffee.  It's always better to bring beans in , I think they don't emit so much smell as ground in a paper bag.
Buck wasn't going to let me get away with that.  I have deprived him & the girls any coffee grounds in the compost for some weeks now, for their own good, and for peace in my house.
He hasn't launched himself at me since I shut them off, but today he ran at me, hurled his beak toward the bag, piercing it, and making a couple more tries.
 [omg, I just saw a fruit fly!!]
He successfully caused me to spill about 1/4 of the bag before I got away, the rest pouring into my shirt.
I'm leaving now.  They are on their own.

Downward mobility

There is no point in providing Buck with attractive hens of interesting lineage.  He will have her looking like a crack whore in a few weeks.

I tried isolating her for a day, but she was so miserable that it was almost not worth it. 

First I had to make sure Buck came out of the coop first, then I got in and closed the door behind me to indignant shouts from outside that translated roughly as "Bitch!"
You would think that in a space the size of the interior of a Subaru, I'd not have a problem catching one hen.
Wrong.
There's a channel between the roof of the nesting box and the nesting boxes where there is plenty of hay and some manure to create a toxic dust cloud by a reluctant chicken rapidly moving from  one nesting box to the other.
I read somewhere that it is bad form to try to catch a hen and to be unsuccessful because it gives them the idea that they have a chance to foil human efforts and step out of their slave status.  Then they have hope of evolving back to the resourceful and independent jungle fowl ancestors they came from -  {yes, chickens do believe in evolution}.
I am hunched over breathing through my shirt that I'm holding with one hand while I grab for this very fast chicken in a very small space where the visibility is getting worse by the second.
I am in charge. I will succeed.
Putting Barbie into the cat carrier and keeping her there long enough to grow new feathers will mean listening to her outraged remarks until she refuses to speak to me at all and begins to act like Mae who underwent the same treatment and is now fully feathered and round as she should be, but holds me in the lowest regard as a consequence.
Barbie went through all the food and tipped over the water in about 15 minutes.
I'm going to wait until more feathers come off and she's more uncomfortable and then will perhaps be grateful to be separated from the other girls.
She has figured out how to get the protective saddle off, so I figure at this point I've done all I can stand to do, and she's just going to have to take her chances.

Sloppy Habits.

After 2 days of hauling loads of stuff to the dump [spring cleaning, haven't even gotten to the cellar yet]  I broke with the customary routine of enjoying the hot tub late at night to float around with a nice cup of tea and the recent issue of The New Yorker.
As soon as I had gotten in the tub, Buck began growling from  under the deck.
"grrrrawwaarrrr."  he said
"GRAK, buk buk!" he said and leapt up on to the deck next to the hot tub.
Fixing me with an unswerving and disapproving gaze, he jumped up on the rim, grabbed the magazine out of my hand and tossed it to the ground.  In my surprise I lost most of the cup of tea in the tub, while splashing him to let him know he wasn't welcome.
Sorry I have no photographic proof of this, but it is a true story.
I suppose, in future, daytime soaking will have to include bunches of grapes to throw around for distraction and bribery.

It Might as Well be Spring...

I got a rotator cuff injury this week from patting myself on the back.  Self congratulation took place a little too soon.  Buck was not a tamer, calmer, happier more pacifist chicken, he had only been suffering from seasonal affective disorder.  He had  asked himself "Oh, what's the point?"  He was put off by the cold, the frostbite on his formerly handsome red comb, turning it black and scaly in places.  His feet hurt.  He had ingrown toenail on one foot.  Everything just seemed like too damned much trouble.  So he caved in, and allowed himself to be picked up, patted and generally human-handled more than in the early days.
I could be out shoveling, or moving objects around in the yard, or going to the car with a bag in my hand, and Buck would stand around on one foot, casting a disinterested eye on the proceedings, hardly bothering to molest nearby hens.
I thought he had gotten used to the idea that nobody was going to give him the boot, or boil him around here and he could relax and just be a happy chicken.
Nope.
We've had a few truly warm days now, and every time I look out in the yard, he's circling some hen.  I did a few dump runs today, and every time I left the van unattended, he had gotten in and roosted there with some of his girls and grumbled and complained when asked [nicely] to vacate.
He rushes me if he sees me with something in my hand and the girls come tearing after him like a cloud.  They are looking for food.  He is looking for more opportunity to point out to all life forms, particularly resident gyno-Americans, who's boss.
The season of walking backwards has returned.

& Now a Word from Buck....

You think it's easy being a chicken?  You think I am unemployed, just strutting around eating bugs, getting sugar from the ladies whenever I want, and feasting on grapes, watermelon & lettuce that the Gyno-American throws at me to keep me from kneecapping it?
No.  It's not all the nest of luxury around here.  I have to be vigilant for all kinds of threats, all the time.

There are dangerous pillows.

Evil Towels....

Threatening shoes...

Unfortunate fashion choices.

Unwelcome attention.

Aggressive Chicken impersonators and...

Competition.