Are we having fun yet?

Buck wakes up cheerful, full of beans and ready for love.  I'm not sure I could say the same for the girls.  They act as though they would prefer to have the time to linger over the first trashing of the garden and bug-picking.  Once Buck has grabbed one of them, expressed himself and sauntered off pointing out to all spectators his masculine marvelousness, the hens go back to their contemplative examination of the yard.   They pretend nothing happened, but not before they have restored their dignity by shaking themselves thoroughly while staggering away. They are like girls on a date with a masher who upon their escape, whip out a compact, fix their hair and make-up, straighten their skirt and hail a cab.
I have read that chickens have one eye on the sky for predators, and the other for examination of objects closer to them, and I see the hens busy with breakfast, but still very adept at jumping to the side when Buck is circling.  Also, he isn't very subtle.
I can see why Buck finds it demoralizing to be caught and picked up by humans.  We have to do to him pretty much what he does to his hens, grab him by the neck and push him down to the ground and tamper with his view of himself as ruler of creation.
Not much difference between us if it comes to that.  The unexpected interference from whoever is in charge of me stepping in, grabbing me by the throat and forcing me down to the ground...  It really messes with my idea of myself as being in charge.  It also interferes with breakfast.  Maybe I should keep an eye out.

Specialist, schmecialist, get your hand out of my ass.

Buck has been a little wheezy for a couple of days.  Can chickens get asthma?  What do I know?   I thought from a bit of reading about it that there could be all kinds of lurking respiratory dangers that would spread through the flock faster than you can say "Buck!".   I called my vet who has been wonderful with my cats, very understanding about my dogs and to whom my family has always gone with all problems animal.
"I don't know anything about chickens." He says.
Well, that makes 2 of us.
I called an avian specialist in a town under an hour away, and made an appointment for later that day.
Come 3:00, I get a towel and a cat carrier, invade the coop where I have made everyone stay rather than be miserable out in this torrential rain we're having, and corner Buck.  He is hunkered down, ready for a final spring so I catch him in mid-air,  wrap the towel around him and pop him into the cat carrier.  The hens are all standing around  saying things like
"Did you see what she did to him?"
"Oh, I know...."
It's so awful!"
"Oh, I know....."
He crowed most of the way to Marlborough, and kept it up in the vet's office.  The other patrons and their patients seemed to get a charge out of a chicken in a vet's office.  I suppose if I had taken him to, say, an Orthopedic surgeon, they might think I was taking that politician from Nevada at her word and bringing him as payment.
Buck and I waited, he told everyone what his opinion of them really was, and I filled out forms - 3 pages - containing questions I could not answer:  How old is he.  Where did he come from.  Please list all vaccinations.  What is the problem.  How much does he eat.  Does he live in the house with you.
I figure most of the birds this guy sees are parrots or other slave birds, because he had no idea what breed he was, how old he was or why he was asthmatic, but gave me anti-biotics, just in case anti-biotics were what was needed, and I was grateful that he had taken turd samples to look for parasites, [there were none, they wouldn't dare] and stared down his beak under a bright light, and examined his feet that I didn't get around to telling him how I feel about anti-biotics.
I'm going to go with nature's anti-biotics, and up the vitamin C content of his diet.
I watched Buck being manhandled mercilessly in a way that I couldn't have imagined him tolerating if I had not seen it for myself.
All the way home Buck was thoughtful.
He laid down in the center of the carrier and nibbled some grapes.
When released back into his home, his ladies were still there, glad to see him clustering around, and as I walked away I could hear him telling them -
"Brrrr.....ack!  Grrrrr ipity waht -  buh!!"

Buck hears himself, and likes what he hears.

I have a very small house.  All the easier for the chickens to race around it to stand outside whatever window I'm near and complain about the service, or comment on the decor.  The latter, with more perspicacity when they have managed to get inside the house and are evaluating the furniture for perchage.
I'm not going to add on to this place at my age, instead I'm getting rid of all the stuff I don't need and my descendants have let me know they don't care about.
This weekend, it was the piano.  I don't know how long a story you want about this, but probably not as long as it is, so the short version is after several hours of grunting and wheezing I got it dismantled down to the harp, and with the help of a neighbor, hoisted it back up off the floor where it had fallen and shoved it out the door to await its fate on the deck.
When is rains, or it is mid-day, or the hens are tired of looking for food, when the wheedling for Purina behavior is no longer effective, the girls will come and lie down outside the glass door and preen.  They  enjoy the shade of the piano harp and it looks as though it might foil predators.
I heard more noise being made than was customary for siesta time.  It got my attention because Buck though not stingy with his communications doesn't keep on crowing without it meaning something  like -
"I'm the greatest!  I am undefeated by the evil towel!  I laugh at your broom and pillow!"
" Check out the moves!  & the plumage!"
or
"Get off my lawn!  You want a piece of me?!"
Today he went on and on for nearly an hour so I thought I should check it out.  The girls were having a nice lie down, gossiping among themselves.

 Buck was standing as close to the harp as he could get and crowing his most magnificent and elongated crow.  When he stopped, he leaned in to the piano  to hear his voice echoing through the strings.
At first I thought I was imagining things, but he kept on doing it.
The hens ignored him.
If he keeps it up, I'm going to have to take steps.

Cuddly Buck

I just wish I'd gotten the earlier photo of Cayce holding Buck under one arm and his German Shepherd puppy under the other, with each one snapping, hissing and snarling across Cayce's body.
What happened, was this.  The 6 week old puppy smelled chicken, the chickens smelled baby wolf.  Buck was pretty sure he could nip the situation in the bud by killing the puppy with his bare claws.  The puppy, aptly named Storm, was pretty sure she was up to her ancestral heritage of grabbing herself a bucket of chicken, even if that chicken was 3 times her size.  She's got a big dog's ego, and Buck remembers his dinosaur ancestors.
I heard that Gallus Gallus and Gallus Domesticus are our modern genetic representatives for T-Rex.  I would have thought velociraptors, but judging from the size of T-Rex's legs, and his [or her] cantilevered tail I would imagine that they were built for speed.  As I have said before, it's pretty hard to outrun a chicken, especially when they run under things where I can't go.
Cayce can pick Buck up, without a towel, tickle him into a stupor and walk away with impunity.
On this day though, the only person who didn't come out of the 3-way confrontation unscathed was Cayce who sported several Buck bites on the arm he'd held the puppy with.  
What Buck lacks in accuracy, he makes up for in enthusiasm.

The Bridge Club

In response to the suggestion that we get chickens, my mother used the argument that chickens made her uncomfortable because they reminded her too much of her contemporaries.
In deference to that idea, I have referred to Buck's girls as the Bridge Club, though no husband of any of my mother's friends would have rippled through the room posturing and commenting during a game. Not if they wanted their wives to give them any positive attention over the next 24 hours.
These girls are every bit as intent on their bidding and the remaining number of trump cards, though. It's a carefully organized society.

Every now and then when a player is dummy, she can leave the table for the duration of that hand. Nobody asks any questions, but in the case of chickens, if Buck notices that one of his ladies is missing, he has many questions. Also, accusations, usually directed towards me. I happened to be in the way today while Buck was rounding up a disobedient hen, probably Pearl, the most notorious non-conformist. She pretends to be deaf when he calls. First thing in the morning when Buck is coercing a little sugar out of the hens, Pearl is the first to go under, the least aware of how fast to sidestep his brutishness, so maybe she doesn't give a rat's hinder what he's saying to her from her safe perch on my window.
Buck doesn't give up.  He saw me in his path,  let out a growl, danced sideways, and puffed himself up.
"Clear off , YOU!"
I stepped behind a conveniently located shrub, let him hustle past, keeping up his talk at the errant hen.
"Broowwahh, tak bik brrrrut brrrut. bickity bickity groooooo."  ["How many times do I have to say it.   It's dangerous to get separated from the flock!"]
"Quwa?"  she says.
"Buck, Buck."  she says. [Which I think translates, as ' Oooh, you gweat big mans" but I could be wrong.]
What is really going on is that Pearl is trying to find her way into the house where the motherlode of cat food is, while the other girls cluster around behind Buck who is looking through the back door at the cat food, vocalizing like an Irish Tenor.
She's no dummy.

Invitation to Fear

Yesterday Buck showed me how quickly fear manifests as action. I have worked on just handling him and understanding his language enough to read the warning signs. In my journey to understand the chicken mind I have found that being afraid is squirting lighter fluid on an already burning coal.
Why be afraid of a chicken who, though more mobile is much smaller. I have handled small children having tantrums who have frightened me more.
A friend was visiting, it was a fine September day, perfect for sitting on the deck with cups of coffee. She could not calm down.
Buck jumped up on the deck from underneath where it is nice and cool and there are plenty of bugs and walked once around the table eyeing her as though he were auditioning for an episode of Law & Order.
If you are sitting down, not shuffling your feet or waving towels around, he will just finish patrolling his beat, and go on to more interesting pursuits.
She got up and moved so that if Buck jumped up on the deck again, she'd be able to see him coming.
He jumped up on the deck again. Noticing that the seating arrangements had changed, it was his job to check it out. This time he growled before going back under the deck. A pattern of movement developed, like a dance, ending up with Buck being confused about her behaviour and deciding to put a stop to it. Her voice got shrill, Buck got busy. I interceded.
Throughout this I had been telling her that he wouldn't do anything other than walk around if she just stayed in her chair, but she'd had past experience with geese, and at one point told me that she would claim her right to be afraid. Her fear manifested as just the thing that would spark Buck's aggression - acting twitchy, shuffling her feet and waving brightly colored towels around. He takes his job of protecting the girls very seriously and like many tough guys, doesn't have much sense of humor.
This reminded me; I fear things that haven't happened yet, that happened at one time, that may never happen or that aren't happening now, when just holding still and watching is all that's needed. Thanks, Buck!

Red Light!!

Remember that game?  I guess chickens remember it too, because Buck was playing it with me this morning.
I overslept, the occasional consequence of frequent insomnia, so it was almost 10 AM when I went to let the chickens out of their nice, still new, house.  The ladies were on the perch, though they had left 4 eggs in one of the nesting boxes - they seem to prefer the one that's least accessible because it's behind the food & water.  Buck was drumming his toes impatiently and came out grumbling.
"About bloody time!!"
"Sorry...."
His mood seemed to indicate taking the judicious course of standing behind the door, then moving to behind the big water tub while he was busy molesting hens, then through the brush pile which would make it troublesome for him to come stomping up behind me.
Have you ever been rushed by a chicken?  It's quite an experience.  I have wondered what would happen if I did not defend myself, but just had thick trousers and heavy shoes on.  I could let him get exhausted, but I haven't had the nerve for this yet.  I still block him with my shoe, or try to grab him.  Easiest just to use subterfuge and scuttle behind obstacles as I make my way out of, or back to the house.
Though he was way at the other end of the yard, I heard him run around the house after me as I was on my way to the car.  I turned and stopped.  He held still.  I turned to go to the car again, and heard the sound of a very large chicken behind me, gaining ground.  I stopped and turned.  He stopped with one foot still in the air.  I made a last sprint for the van, getting the door closed just ahead of his beak.  In the rear view, I saw him fluff all his feathers out to full length, shake, crow, and swagger off, undefeated.
I have been trying to find out what breed he is, and the nearest I can tell unless someone knows more, which is highly probable, he is a brown leghorn.  I am told this is a rare breed.  If Buck wasn't enough by himself to be special with his arrogance, superiority, attention to detail and beauty, this would be enough to keep him out off the grill.  I should probably find a brown leghorn hen to add to the flock.  Every high school girl's room needs to have one prima donna.