Ain't No Messiah Here For Us Chickens

So on Christmas while folks were eating some of the animals that donated their feeding dish to be Baby Jesus' cradle, I got to thinking;  what is Christmas about for the animals?  They sacrifice more than their place settings.  Now their lives and even the integrity of their genetic codes are on the line.  Some of them give us hearts or bits of hearts so that we can continue playing golf and shopping.
Buck and the girls received cat food [ let's not get started on what goes into making cat food ] grapes, apples, mixed salad greens, dried fruits and plenty of nuts, but is that compensation for the ravaging havoc we inflict on them as a slave species?
The weather was nasty, a beak or two poked out for a sniff was as far as anyone would go.
Last winter, Buck lured his girls out to forage when it was bitter, icy and even if there was some snow, but now they have gotten used to a warm coop where food doesn't have to be worked for and greens get home delivery.  Today, I shoveled a path for them, put some treats on the ground and went away, assuming they'd come out eventually.  Hours went by, I could hear them in the coop jockeying for prime position in the nesting boxes - I heard Buck trying coax one or the other of them into giving him a little sugar.  Then I heard the "let's get ready to roost" chatter.
They are no different from anyone else in the winter who doesn't want to go out tearing up the slopes on slats or blades, or tennis rackets.  In the move toward more efficiency, or as my family would characterize it, laziness, Even chickens like to do what makes the most sense.  Why make work for themselves?  Only in chickens, it isn't considered a sin, therefore, no salvation is needed, and no Savior.......- unless you are a battery hen.

S.A.D. Chicken

In the very small, [but I am certain, festooned with multiple ridges] brain of Buck, the weather is my fault, and I must pay.
I have stepped up the bribes.
It has been rainy, or cold, or windy, so the coop got cleaned on the first nice day.  I was told in pecks of one syllable;
"The eggs are not your beeswax."
"Keep your hands off the feeding tray and don't touch the water dispenser." he advised.
"Get away from that door" he suggested.
Later after Buck was finished marching around getting all the girls in before dark I made the mistake of being too near their little door before he had roosted.  Ka-THUMP!  I heard as he leapt down, rushing for the door, planting a well aimed snap on the web of my hand.
He has been bad tempered lately.
I see a pattern here; he goes along for awhile, pretending not to notice me walking back and forth to the car, not turning an eye toward any red object I might have in hand until we have had a few days of rain.  The lack of sun acts on him like a depressant.
He becomes moody.
He broods on prior injustices.
He remembers he was once a proud velociraptor.
Though his brothers and comrades have been put to death - rolled in batter made from their children and run through the fryer, he has survived.  He is alive for a reason, and there are days when he takes up the flag of Avian Liberation in his beak with cold determination.
He will not listen to reason.
He is not swayed by grapes.
He will stop to eat them but then fortified with their sweet juice, remembers the task at hand.
The humans must pay.
Three of the New Girls - New Pearl, Stella and Golda don't understand that there is a revolution going on.  When I come out into their yard, they run over and stand very close to my shoes looking hopeful.  They allow me to scratch their stomachs, to pick them up - they have even been willing to sit on my shoulder.  Buck looks up in horror.  

Update......

In the 2 month hiatus there have been some changes.  Just as I was feeling smug and superior about having kept my chickens in one flock for as long as I had, I lost 2 in the space of a week.  I later found out that my neighbor who has a small flock about 1/2 of a mile away had lost several of hers to fisher cats.  The fishers had been prying the metal siding off her coop to get at her hens, and she dealt with it by moving the hens to a friend's house until the fisher went looking elsewhere for dinner.  She told me she had been unsuccessful in trapping the beast and asked if I had been losing chickens.  I would have appreciated the warning in advance, but as it was, I lost Mae and Pearl leaving Buck with 2 ladies.  I was going to see how that went, but then a friend [the one who landed me with Buck in the first place] told me about a man who wanted to cull his flock of some hens, and sucker that I am, figuring that taking care of Buck and 2 girls is no different from 6, went to the other side of the Merrimac river to collect 2 Delawares, 1 Buff Orphington and 1 barred Plymouth.  Very charming girls, beautiful and well kept, and introduced them to the coop.
This time I tried to be responsible and divided the coop w/some chicken wire so that the new girls could be viewed and criticized by the established hens without being picked on.  That worked the first night.
The second night I checked on them, and the Plymouth [Zebra] was muscling over the top of the fence to get closer to Buck, and Stella, one of the Delawares was squeezing around the edge through the tunnel of nesting boxes with the same purpose in mind.  Buck sat quietly on his perch eyes half closed, enjoying the attention.
Day 3, I gave up and tore out the netting while the chickens formed into a flock and roamed around the yard, ruining what was left of my perennials and pushing all the piles of raked leaves back on to the walk.
Buck had been docile during the time of only having 2 hens to bully and pester, but now with more he is busy running back and forth,  keeping them in line, making sure they stay together and making sure I understand that he is taking no nonsense from me.  The first couple of evenings, I was getting the chickens in, and he made it very clear to me that I was interfering.  He seemed to take it personally that I was telling him how to do his job, and once he turned and looked at me, unmistakably telling me so.  Then he bit my shoes, ignored me as he went back to work getting the girls in to the coop.
All the same, I have since then had an evening or two when I have had to pick up 'New Pearl' and 'Golda'  to put them in to the coop because they were standing around finishing up a cigarette and chatting as it was getting dark.
After 1 1/2 years I have realized that I am a slave to the chickens.  They have destroyed what yard I had, left fewmets all over the place and gnawed my herbs into oblivion, yet I still find them charming, and prefer their singing and chatter to  almost any gathering of humans.  Buck goes through periods of calm, and just when I relax and think he's mellowed, he lets me know what's what.... Then we have to play " Who's the Bitch?".