On the Other Hen....

Is it consideration, or is it a bribe?  As my flock dwindles this summer, Buck is trying harder.  He's putting girls in the coop earlier, and I have to close the door before dusk now, or Bandit, the raccoon gets all their eggs, and it's only a matter of time before he decides to take a chicken.  I'm not sure who has been taking chickens, but I have lost 2 during the day.  Buck now only has 5 girls, and he keeps them close, gets more upset when his current favorite runs off on her own, and hunts for little treats for them.  I have watched him catch a large fly, kill it, toss it down and make little short noises that are similar to what he says when he's tucking in to a pile of blueberries or watermelon - "tuk,tuk,bik,bik, tuckety, bickity!" and the hens run over to see what he has, he picks up the fly and drops it within beak range of one of the ladies, and they give it the eye.  He picks it up and pretends to eat it, "num num" he seems to be telling them, or [" Hey baby, how do you like the canoli?"] and they swallow the fly, say thank you in Avian and move on to the next edible.  They must have amazing taste receptors in their beaks, [ I heard on NPR that birds don't taste with their tongues ] because they get so excited about certain things, or the possibility of something new.
This weekend rain or sweltering heat aside, I have to enlarge the size of their restricted area, because I'm going off and leaving them in the care of my family to move an RV across the country, West to East.  This blog will be about that for a couple of entries, so if you don't want travelogue, skip it.  

tick, tick.

Between computer problems and having too many animals on the property, it has been  enough work to get simple things done, so there's a backlog of stories now.  My daughter's giant puppy and her disagreeable cat are staying with me for what seems like the entire summer as time stretches out ahead of me like a Salvador Dali Landscape.
Storm suffers OCD when it comes to engaging Buck in a game of tag.  It makes me tired just watching them.  She begins by standing outside their new enclosure and barking.  Buck takes that sort of talk very seriously, adopting  martial stance and Elizabethan costume. After an prelude of stomping back and forth on his side of the fence, he moves briskly with focus and intention around the corner of his doorway and out into the arena. [ It used to be a lawn, but between dog toes and chicken beaks it has become an arena]  Storm lunges and barks until Buck gives chase but with the conservative nature of chickens, only does what is necessary before strutting back to engage in the important business of bug detection.  Storm never feels as though the issue has been settled, so it may take as many as a dozen tries to provoke Buck into a serious chase.  This ends with Storm standing in the road, access to the house blocked by Chicken.
The girls in the meantime wait in the coop, talking amongst themselves.
"Oooooh, he's so Big!" the say.
A word about the cat.
Molly.
More about the cat: She's a little bitch, and this is coming from a cat person.  A cat whisperer, even.  She has driven off my beloved boys. They have gone to the neighbors, I hope not forever.  Yesterday began by having to throw out all bedding down to the mattress  and the carpet in the room she has been expressing herself in and hiding my shoes before they fall prey to the same fate.  My cats and dogs have always loved cuddling with each other.  Storm and Molly have not reached that kind of understanding.
But the title of this is about ticks - there are so many ticks this year, I'd need a much bigger flock to keep them from turning up daily on my arms, legs, neck - I may have missed some, but the nature of ticks is that they don't go unnoticed forever.  It's too bad the dog can't be trained to find them and eat them instead of just being a tick metro.
Well.
Time for the Deet Dip.