tyrant chicken.

Buck has been in the yard for over a year now, and rarely attacks me anymore.
The mark I have on my leg from his last gratuitous assault has faded nearly completely.  He has utterly destroyed the broom, though.  He can be standing around, gurgling and chuckling to his girls but if he sees that thing from the corner of his eye, his mental state blossoms from peace and contentment to rage and revenge.
Some months ago I tracked down Buck's previous owner who characterized him as an evil chicken who wouldn't allow anyone in the coop unless they had a broom for protection.  I find that if I have a broom, Buck is busy moving heaven to see that the broom stays away from the coop.

When I pull my car into the yard, Buck comes running excitedly over, hoping for a treat.  If I'm carrying a bag, he will attack it, but I'm pretty sure he's hoping to poke a hole is something that will then spill on the ground.  He calls the hens over in a congenial tone, which is not the warlike one he uses when he believes he's protecting them.
My daughter is still afraid of him, and won't go outside without the dog or me to stand between her and the dangerous beak.

Having firmly established his reputation as a force to be reckoned with, he is free to strut around the yard importantly and proclaim himself the master of all anyone surveys.
I know men like that.....

Chicken Purgatory

Bette had been coming out of the coop and wandering at the outer periphery of the flock.  Having lost her alpha status, she lost the heart to muscle in.  She avoided the others, and they acted in a way that drove her off by herself. What I probably should have done was what a friend suggested; taking her inside and turning her into a pet chicken instead of the co-housing members the others are.  I am allergic to chickens, however, and having a summer of battling my hysterical immune system, I was reluctant to invite another crisis.  Excuses.
Every night as the others went in to roost, I looked around for her.  She would not go in to the safety of the coop that she'd refused to leave for the first 10 days after her attack.  She was finding places further away from everyone and became harder to find.
Two nights ago, I couldn't find her.
Up to that point, she gave herself away by talking to herself before going to sleep.  As someone who spends possibly way too much time alone, I know that it is easy to start talking to one's selves out loud.  She could have been doing that.  She could have been saying prayers.
She could have been asking the great clawed and furry gods of death to come and finish the job.
She escaped them once, but life wasn't what it once was, and she was hostage to the region in between a good chicken's life and someone's digestive tract.
Some people who have had near death experiences say they no longer fear death, and that they were even reluctant to return to finish this life.
Last night I couldn't find her.  It was dusk, and the beak count was 5, and I circled the house and the yard hoping to hear her evening chatter, but no clucking was going on, no sound at all.
The remaining girls, now back to bridge club numbers have been treating her as though she were already gone for some time now.  Chickens seem to be able to enjoy what is going on, or wait patiently until it is over with.  They engage with their entire hearts and attention to the moment.  The main flock knew something was wrong with Bette, and that it wasn't going to turn around.
There are events which mark us, and for who knows how long, render us as carriers if it's grief, vessels if joy.
Grave illness changes us, profound disappointment, trauma - even a turn of great good luck.  People have been posting on FB how our thinking creates reality, but I recoil from that, it is too obvious to me that life creates us, and the spectrum of response we have to life is all we have to work with, and that spectrum has precious few answers.
For a grieving hen, it's a simple thing.  When you can't be part of the flock, you can be part of the food chain.

Chicken Catcher

In the Northern Latitudes, in the early days of rail travel, there was a shovel-like affair attached to the front of the engine called a cow-catcher.  It is this principle that I employ in persuading everyone that indeed, it is time to roost.  

Every so often the AA's decided to stay up late.  I have tried to find a correspondence between astrological cycles and this behaviour; no dice.  It might be meteorological.  I notice their conversations change with the barometer.

So, back to the chicken catching, I have a piece of the fence that I wrap around myself like an apron or long skirt of dubious couture to prevent more bruising of the type Buck might be in the mood to inflict if he sees no impediment to doing so. 

 If I turn the apron around, so that from the hen's side it's convex, it appears to them that they will be scooped up like the actors in Soylent Green, and they hurry up the ramp.

Buck is the only one I have to push along.  He side-steps, he trips over the obstacles in back of him that he cannot see. He protests.  He tries to get a piece of me.  

Once in, I hear him grumbling to his ladies, and their responses of sympathy ....rough translation: "Yes, dear.....".

I suspect they listen to his grievances only partially, knowing that it is politic to pretend to care about the tyrant's wounded ego, knowing when he has made his point, he will move on to other things.  "Yes, dear..."  

I know women like that.

Live Chickens

Two weeks have passed, and Bette is acting like a chicken again, though her status may not be regained.  I am so glad that she's all in one piece, her wings work, and though she is beset with a new reluctance, progress is being made.  Today I didn't let any of the Avian Americans out of the fenced in area and by the end of the day they were all standing around together waiting for Buck to give the orders to go in for the night. 
Buck has tried to inflict his attentions on Bette, so I suppose he feels as though she has recovered, but when I go down to close the chicken door and check numbers of beaks and toes, she has not gone in with the rest.   At first I thought maybe she was so despondent that she wanted the predator to come back and finish her off - I have known woman like that - but that's not it.  She roosts, but under the ramp to the door.  Is she hoping to be overlooked?  She allows me to pick her up and put her in the coop, but I've been putting her in the nesting box, because  otherwise she wants to come back out and acts as though I have put her in a room where a cocktail party is going on, and she is incorrectly dressed, or just came out of rehab.
Anyhow, she has survived.  I think she's improving.  I'll know for certain when she stops being easy to pick up.  The docility is disturbing.